


Boyband Mansion

by StoryRodeo_333



Category: One Direction (Band), 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: I know, Other, Swearing, Violence, getting sold, its a getting sold to bts fic, just go with it, mild sexual harassment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-22 17:15:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21080177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StoryRodeo_333/pseuds/StoryRodeo_333
Summary: Girl gets sold to BTS by her mother but the whole situation is way bigger than she thought.





	1. Chapter 1

I woke up with a yawn, my dream still replaying in my mind. It was a dream about my favorite boyband, BTS. Just then, my mom came into my room smoking a cigarette. She put out the cigarette in her hand and said, “Oh good, you’re awake. Get dressed and pack your Aeropostale suitcase. Your new owners are waiting in the living room.”

“New owners?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“I had to sell you to BTS. It’s for the best. We need to pay the bills somehow. It’s been hard ever since your father left,” my mom said. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My mom sold me? And to BTS of all things?! Was I still dreaming? But as I packed my belongings into my Aeropostale suitcase, it felt more like a nightmare. I felt betrayed…betrayed by my own mom! As I looked into the mirror, my chocolate orbs wide, and pulled my dark hair into a ponytail, I thought about what would become of me after being bought. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad. After all, all the guys in BTS were really hot.

“Hurry up Lunaria!” I heard my mom yell to me from downstairs. I grabbed my Aeropostale suitcase and ran out of my room. In the living room sat six guys, all wearing skinny jeans and expensive shirts and jewelry. They looked young, maybe a little bit older than me. Of course, I recognized them all, though one of them was missing. Sitting on the couch was the gay looking one, the god looking one, and the daddy af one. Then squeezed onto the chair were the rest.

“Hello Lunaria,” said RM. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“What are you all doing here?” I asked, feeling excitement at meeting (most) of my idols but also trepidation.

“As your mother explained, she has sold you to us. You are now our property,” RM said, cringing a bit as he said it.

“Isn’t slavery illegal?” I asked. “This is slavery!”

“Yeah, but times are hard Lunaria,” my mom said as she pulled another cigarette from the pack, tapping it before lighting it. “I have to do what I need to in order to make ends meet. You understand, right?”

“I suppose…” I said, my eyes finding the floor. My mom blew smoke into the living room before wandering into the kitchen. The boys and I all cringed as the smoke clung to the room. I looked at each of them. They all looked uncomfortable to varying degrees. Jungkook looked especially uncomfortable, shifting in his seat, his eyes darting around refusing to meet mine. I knew that he was the same age as me, so this must be especially strange for the youngest member of the band.

“Well, if you are ready to go, we should leave,” said RM, standing up from the couch. “We have dance practice in an hour and it will take us at least an hour and a half to get to the mansion.”

“You won’t make it in time,” I mumbled as I followed them out. Before I walked out of my house, perhaps for the last time ever, I looked back at my mom. She was leaning in the kitchen doorway smoking. She didn’t even spare me a wave. I felt tears well up in my eyes as Jin closed the door behind me, blocking my view of my mom once and for all.

Waiting in the driveway was a small bus. The doors opened and I followed the six boys into it. I tried hefting my Aeropostale suitcase up the stairs but it was heavy with all of my belongings. J-Hope took my Aeropostale suitcase from me.

“Thank you,” I said. He smiled in return. As I entered the bus, I realized that it was a party bus. There were bench seats along the sides but the middle of the floor was clear, a disco ball hanging from the ceiling. There was a clear pole near the back of the bus, presumably for pole dancing. I wondered if anyone on this bus knew how to pole dance. I certainly didn’t. The disco ball was slowly spinning, casting dancing lights around the inside of the bus even though there was no music playing. I sat in the back of the bus and watched the others take their seats as well. The doors of the bus closed and we started moving. I watched V feel around in the crack of the seat for several minutes before producing a seatbelt, which he fastened across himself. Finally, my curiosity got the best of me.

“Where are we going?” I asked, expecting only RM to answer since he was the only one fluent in English.

“We’re going to the mansion,” he said. I took note of the fact that he didn’t say “home.”

“Where is Suga?” I asked. I was met with silence. The boys all looked at each other.

“He…has actually been missing for a little over a month,” said RM. “We don’t know where he is. And please, don’t use our stage names. You are going to be living with us, you can use our real names.”

I nodded. The fact that Suga…or rather, Yoongi, was missing didn’t sit well with me. Where could he be? Was he in danger? Did he run away? Was he kidnapped? My wandering thoughts were interrupted when J-hope… Hoseok started a conversation with Jungkook beside him, who was looking more and more uncomfortable the closer we got to the mansion. They were speaking Korean though, so I wasn’t able to eavesdrop. Jungkook didn’t seem to be too responsive though, so the conversation fizzled out. The rest of the trip was spent in silence. 

When we finally arrived at the mansion, I was shocked to see just how big it was. As I disembarked the bus, I looked at both ends of the mansion trying to see where it ended, but it seemed to go on in both directions for as far as I could see. I had never seen a building quite so enormous. I looked around for my Aeropostale suitcase, which Hoseok was carrying off of the bus. He insisted on carrying it for me as we entered the mansion. The foyer was huge, white marble floors and two grand staircases curving around the edges of the room. A crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling. Arches led into other rooms to the right and left of the foyer and one arch under the balcony between the stairs led to what looked like a kitchen.

RM…Namjoon led the way up one of the stair cases. I followed at the back of the group. We walked through several hallways, past several rooms before we arrived at a hallway with six rooms. The rest of the boys wandered off to different rooms while Namjoon led me to the room at the end of the hall. When he opened the door, I was surprised to see a beautiful and spacious bedroom.

“This can be your room,” he said, walking in. “The rest of us already share rooms with each other. We don’t really use this one.”

“Wow! It’s beautiful!” I said. The room was painted a very light pink with art on the walls and a big floor to ceiling mirror next to a pale wooden armoire. The four poster bed was draped with sheer white curtains. A chaise lounge sat in the middle of the room with a white fur draped over it. A vanity sat in the corner with a bench that matched the chaise lounge perfectly. The room was lit by an ornate paper lamp hanging above the center of the room. It was dim, but I spotted a few other lamps throughout the room. My room back home couldn’t have even been a quarter of this room.

“Anyway, we have to get to dance practice, so take your time settling down,” Namjoon said. “A maid will bring you lunch around noon and then dinner is at seven. You are welcome to join us. We eat in the dining room in the west wing.”

He turned to leave and my heart leapt into my throat at the thought of being left alone.

“Wait!” I stopped him. “I have so many questions! I thought you guys lived in Seoul.”

“Not anymore,” he said, casting his eyes downward. “We haven’t seen our hometowns or families in quite a while.” He looked away from me, his shoulders slumping. “I’d love to stay and answer all your questions, but I really have to get to dance practice. If I’m too late, our teacher will kill me,” he said with a small laugh. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

Namjoon left the room, leaving me absolutely alone. As soon as the door clicked shut behind him, I took a moment to look around. As fancy as it was, it also felt quite cozy. My Aeropostale suitcase was sitting against the wall, waiting to be unpacked but first, I went to the bed and flopped onto the mattress. It was softer than any bed I’ve ever laid on and the comforters were fluffy and plush. I just laid there for a moment, contemplating my predicament.

Was it a predicament though? Sure, I was just sold to seven, well six right now, guys that I barely knew. Sure I knew them from watching them on TV and YouTube, but I didn’t really know them. And now they owned me. They all seemed nice enough though. And if I got to live in a bedroom like this in a lush mansion, the likes of which I’ve never seen before, it couldn’t be that bad. I thought I could get used to this, compared to my old run-down apartment I shared with my mom. I would miss her, but I knew she needed to pay rent somehow. At least now she wouldn’t have to worry about feeding me. And I wouldn’t have to worry about getting a job this summer.

I rolled over onto my back and stared at the ceiling. My stomach rumbled and I thought about what Namjoon had said. _A maid would bring me lunch around noon…_ I wondered what lunch would be. A small clock on the bedside table told me that it was nearing eleven o’clock. I had about an hour to kill before lunch so I might as well start unpacking.

I rolled off of the bed and went over to my Aeropostale suitcase, lifting it onto the chaise lounge. I finished unpacking my clothes and putting them away into the closet and armoire by the time the clock struck eleven thirty. Another half hour before lunch…

I decided to take a look outside my room.

Cracking my bedroom door open, I looked down the hallway. It was empty and I couldn’t hear anyone nearby. I opened the door the rest of the way and stepped out. The hall had five other doors in it, three of them open. As I wandered down the hall, I peeked into each room. They all had two beds in them and they were all decorated differently. One was plain with only a few band posters on the walls. Another was nice, with fairy lights along the ceiling and plants hanging in the window. The last one was messy, clothes all over the floor and lots of posters and pictures on the walls. I didn’t look into the ones with the closed doors.

The hallway split into three different directions when I reached the end. I looked down each hall. They all had various doors and archways leading to other rooms. Taking the hallway to the right, I wandered past several closed doors until I reached an archway. It led into a sitting room with wide windows across the left wall. The windows looked down at what was presumably the front lawn. Bookshelves lined the walls that weren’t covered in art. The décor was modern, sleek white couches and unframed canvas art. A glass hearth sat along the right side of the room. A colorful watercolor painting sat above the hearth. It depicted a surprisingly detailed scene of a person sitting at a piano and the colors created a rainbow effect across the canvas. It was beautiful.

I turned to one of the book cases. It looked like it was mostly classics filling the shelves. Perhaps I could spend my days here reading all the classics I’ve always wanted to read. I’d have plenty of time if BTS was going to be in dance class so often.

As I wandered around the halls some more, finding more rooms similarly decorated, I tried to stay aware of the time. When it felt like a half an hour had passed, I made my way back to my bedroom. I tried retracing my steps and I must have taken a wrong turn at some point, because I ended up in an unfamiliar hallway. I panicked and went back, eventually finding the four way junction of hallways. I looked down all of them until I found the one with the three open doors and three closed ones. As I walked past the rooms, I looked into them just to be sure. They were the same rooms with two beds in each.

When I finally entered my bedroom at the end of the hall, I looked at the clock. It was 12:09. I cursed under my breath. I must have missed lunch. But with a quick glance around the room, I noticed a silver tray with a matching silver lid sitting on the vanity.


	2. Chapter 2

Dinner was an awkward affair. The seven of us sat around an excessively long dining table. The dining room was modern, much like the rest of the mansion, or at least what I’ve seen of it. The six boys stared at their plates, picking at their food more than actually eating it. They looked exhausted but also a bit despondent. Their shoulders were hunched, the conversation all but nonexistent.

“Guys, at least eat,” said Namjoon. “You must be hungry.”

Some of them mumbled something in Korean, but most of them ignored their leader. Namjoon sighed and turned to me.

“All of our spirits have been down ever since Yoongi went missing,” he said.

“Do you know anything about his disappearance?” I asked.

“Not really,” said Namjoon. “We tried calling the police but police don’t come to the mansion so they were no help.”

I let that sentence replay in my mind several times. It didn’t make any sense. What did he mean police didn’t come to the mansion? I was just about to ask about that when Jimin spoke up, Namjoon translating.

“He asked you how you liked your room,” Namjoon said.

“Oh! I liked it a lot,” I said. “It’s really nice. Why do you all share rooms with each other if there are fancy rooms like that in this mansion?”

“It’s just what we’re used to,” said Namjoon. “Also, those are the rooms we were assigned when we moved in.”

I nodded. Everything about this was strange. There were too many questions floating around in my head. I didn’t know where to start. I decided to start with the biggest one nagging at me.

“So…now that you all own me, what will you do with me?” I asked in a small voice. They all looked at each other.

“Well…we’re not really sure what’s going to happen with you,” said Namjoon. “Our management organized everything. We were only told we had to go pick you up this morning.”

“So…what? Am I supposed to just laze about the mansion while you guys are off doing pop star stuff?” I asked. The boys were silent. I looked to Namjoon, who was looking down at his plate.

“Be careful,” Hoseok said in a thick accent. I looked at him. “If you walk around. Be careful.”

“Don’t go far,” said Jin. Their warnings seemed ominous. I thought back to earlier in the day when I had taken a wrong turn on my way back to my bedroom and had almost gotten lost. Who knew how big this mansion was? I could have easily gotten lost. And who would I call if I did? I didn’t have anyone’s phone number here.

“I saw a room with a really beautiful painting. The one with the person playing piano,” I said. Namjoon perked up and looked over at Jungkook.

“Jungkook painted that one,” he said. I looked at Jungkook in surprise. He didn’t meet my eyes but I could see that the tips of his ears were red.

“Really?” I asked.

“He’s really good,” said Hoseok, a proud smile on his face.

The rest of the dinner passed by in much the same manner; the boys giving me vague answers to my questions besides sitting silently, poking at their food. I got the feeling that they didn’t really know much about my predicament. I also got the feeling they knew what happened to Yoongi but didn’t want to talk about it for some reason.

On our way back to our rooms, I decided to pry one more time. I just couldn’t shake the strange feeling the whole situation gave me.

“I feel like you guys know what happened to Yoongi,” I said, hoping I wasn’t pushing it. “Why won’t you talk about it? Is he okay?”

“We don’t…” Namjoon started, but Jungkook cut him off, spitting something in Korean. Namjoon’s face fell as he translated. “He said…he said we don’t even know you and it’s not really your business.”

“I’m sorry,” Jungkook said. He looked like he wanted to say more but he just shook his head and went into his room.

“Sorry,” said Namjoon. “We’re all pretty stressed about the situation. I think we all just need to get some rest tonight. It’s been a long day. I’m sure you’re tired after everything you went through. We have dance practice first thing in the morning tomorrow, so we probably won’t see you until dinner again.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I still have a lot of questions, but they can wait.”

Namjoon gave me a tight smile. “Try to get some sleep.”

“I will. Good night,” I said.

“Good night.”

We parted ways as we both went to our bedrooms. As soon as I closed my bedroom door behind me, I felt my exhaustion settle in. And as soon as my head hit my pillow, I was out like a light.

The next morning, I awoke to a silver tray of breakfast on the vanity. After eating and freshening up in my private bathroom, I left my room. The boys were nowhere to be seen. They must already be gone for dance practice. I wondered if the dance studio was somewhere in this mansion. It would be cool to watch their practice. As I wandered past the hallway of bedrooms, I decided to take the time to look around. Hoseok and Jin’s warnings from dinner last night rang through my head. I wouldn’t go too far. Every turn I took, I memorized where I was so I wouldn’t get lost.

Eventually, I found myself at the top of the grand staircases, looking down at the foyer. I went downstairs and through one of the arches on the right side of the foyer. It led me into a huge living room. The décor was not as modern as the rooms I saw upstairs, but it wasn’t vintage either. More casual and cozy. A huge flat screen TV sat on the wall above the hearth and on the other side of the room was a pool table and a small bar against the far wall.

That’s when I heard it: a small noise cutting through the silence. It sounded like a voice. I rushed to the other side of the living room, trying to figure out where I heard it from. There were no doors on the other side of the living room, but I heard the voice coming from behind the wall somewhere. It was a bit louder now that I was listening for it on this side of the room. The voice sounded male and whoever it was, they were speaking English, though it was too faint to hear exactly what they were saying.

Did BTS share this mansion with other people? The thought didn’t seem to be too crazy. The mansion was enormous and they all shared rooms with each other in one small hallway. Or perhaps their dance studio was nearby. But who would be speaking English besides Namjoon? The voice definitely didn’t belong to him. I looked at the wall which I heard the voice behind. It was half paneled with wood and half wallpaper. Art covered the wall. I looked at all the paintings. That’s when I noticed it. A sconce on the wall with hinges on one side of the mount. I grabbed the sconce and the mount opened from the wall like a small cupboard, revealing a doorknob hidden in the recess behind the sconce. I turned the doorknob and a hidden door opened up into a new room.

This room was a den of some sort, with book shelves along the walls and a desk in the far corner. Still no one in sight, but the voice sounded closer. I could now tell that the voice had an accent to it, perhaps English. I could pick out bits and pieces of what he was saying. He seemed to be describing a movie to someone. A door across the den seemed to be my only option of moving forward. As I approached it, I could hear the voice much more clearly.

“No! I didn’t like it just because it was stupid!”

A fainter voice said, “so you liked it for the plot? The visuals?”

“No! I…I liked it because of the cool club scene and the nipple armor!”

“The nipple armor. You liked the movie because of the nipple armor. So you liked it because it was stupid.”

“No! I mean…look. I think the Batman movies should be kind of stupid. I don’t like those serious ones. They need to be kind of silly.”

I opened the door before they had the chance to talk about nipple armor any further. This room was a spacious bedroom with a huge four poster bed and a long couch against the far wall. Two people sat on the couch and one sat in the chair which was right next to the door. The guy in the chair looked up at me in surprise. I recognized them all but I couldn’t quite believe it.

“Who are you?” Harry Styles asked from the chair. He blinked then stood up. “I’m sorry, that was rude. But seriously.”

“I’m Lunaria,” I said. “Um…I just moved in yesterday. My mom sold me to BTS.”

“Oh…” Harry trailed off.

“Never mind him,” Louis said, standing from the couch. “Welcome to the Boyband Mansion.”

“The…Boyband Mansion?” I repeated.

“I’m Louis,” he said, holding out his hand. I shook it a bit numbly.

“I know who you guys are,” I said. “My friend was a fan in middle school.”

“Yikes,” Louis said laughing. He scratched the back of his head. “Well, how are you liking your stay so far? How are those guys treating you?”

“They’re fine,” I said. “We haven’t spoken much because most of them don’t know a lot of English and they’re in dance practice most of the day.”

“Oooh right because they have to be absolutely perfect at everything they do,” Louis said, rolling his eyes. “Man, I feel bad for those guys. Their management is fucked up.”

“Ours wasn’t much better,” Zayn mumbled from where he still sat on the couch.

“If I were those guys, I’d be treating you way better than that,” another voice said, entering the room. Liam entered, a glass in his hand. “If we had a tasty morsel like you living with us, I definitely wouldn’t be in dance practice all day, that’s for sure.”

Liam took a sip from his glass as his eyes raked up and down my form. I was glad that I was wearing an oversized sweater and jeans today, even though his gaze still sent shivers up my spine, and not in the good way. I looked away from him to see Harry rolling his eyes and subtly moving to stand in front of me, blocking Liam’s gaze. I fiddled with the bottom of my sweater, untucking it from the front of my waistband to let it hang.

“You guys are killjoys,” Liam said, wandering to the other end of the room to sit at a desk where he opened a laptop.

“I heard you guys talking about Batman movies before I came in,” I said, desperate to change the subject.

“Yeah, Harry just has bad taste in movies,” said Louis. “He likes stuff like the Batman and Robin movie.”

“Well, which one do you like better?” I asked Louis.

“_Dark Night_,” he said as if it were obvious. “None of the other’s really compare. That one is objectively the best one.”

“I never said Batman and Robin was objectively the best, I just said I personally liked it the best,” said Harry.

“Yeah. You have terrible taste,” said Louis. Harry threw his hands up in the air as Louis laughed. I laughed along with them.

“I’m sorry, I have to agree with Louis,” I said, sending a sympathetic look to Harry. He laughed and waved a hand.

“Whatever, you guys just don’t know how to have fun,” he said, snatching up a bag of chips which was sitting on a side table. My eyes followed the bag as he walked out.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“It’s 11:34,” Liam said from the desk. He was playing some sort of game on the laptop.

“I’d better get going,” I said. “I don’t want to miss lunch.”

“Of course!” Louis said. “Don’t let us keep you.”

I waved at them all and left the room the way I came. Once I made it back to the foyer, I was ready to go upstairs and find my way back to my room but something stopped me. It was a quiet sound, coming from somewhere to the left of the foyer. I entered one of the archways as quietly as I could, following the sound and straining my ears. The hallways I took seemed never ending, but the sound was getting louder. It was the sound of crying. It was very faint but I could tell it was a female voice. That made me speed up my search even more. I realized that I haven’t seen another woman yet since I left my mom’s house. The only people I’ve had contact with since arriving has been BTS and One Direction.

I eventually found myself standing in front of a door, the sound of soft, muffled crying coming from behind it. I knocked. The crying stopped and the hallway fell into a deafening silence. I tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. My heart pounded in my chest as I opened the door as gently as I could.

The room was big, perhaps a recreation room of some sort. There were couches and TVs and arcade games lining the back wall. On one of the couches, a pair of wide, dark eyes stared at me from over the top of a pillow. A girl, who looked to be about my age, sat up, still staring at me. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying. Her hair was long and curly and her skin was light brown. She was beautiful.

“Who are you?” she asked, sniffling.

“Um…I’m Lunaria,” I said, gathering my jaw from the floor. “I moved in yesterday. Are you okay?”

“Do I look fucking okay?” she asked, her voice cracking on the last word. She turned away from me as she wiped at her face.

“I’m sorry, that was a stupid question,” I said. “Did something happen?”

“No not really,” she said. “I mean, yes, everything happened but…ugh.”

I walked over to the couch she was on and asked, “May I sit?” She nodded. I sat next to her and put a hesitant arm around her shoulders.

“It’s just…I’m sick of being here,” she said. “This mansion is driving me crazy.”

“Maybe we can go into town later. Or tomorrow,” I suggested. “Maybe a change of scenery is overdue.”

“Right, as if we could ever leave,” she said miserably. I knitted my eyebrows.

“What do you mean?”

“They lock the doors. You can’t leave. The only time anyone leaves here is if a boyband goes on tour or something.”

Adrenaline buzzed through my veins as those words settled over me. I began making connections.

“Namjoon said that they haven’t seen their families in a long time,” I said.

“Yeah, no one has here,” she said.

“What do you mean, no one can leave? Are we all prisoners here?” I asked.

“Kind of.”

We sat in silence for a while as I thought about that. Eventually, the girl seemed to gather herself and she laid her head on my shoulder. Her hair tickled my chin and I caught a whiff of vanilla.

“What is your name?” I asked.

“Kate,” she said.

“I met One Direction,” I said. “They called this place the Boyband Mansion?”

“Yeah, that’s what it’s called. All the boybands come to live here eventually,” she said. “And once they move in, they can never leave.”

“But…BTS goes on tour! They travel the world,” I said.

“Yeah, it’s all controlled,” said Kate. “They can go on tour and perform, but once their tour is over with, they come back here.”

“That’s crazy!” I said. “They’re basically being kept prisoners!”

“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it,” said Kate.

“Maybe we can expose it,” I said. “We can call the police and get them involved.”

“Police don’t come to the mansion,” said Kate. She sighed. “Just face it. We’re doomed.”

I remembered how Namjoon mentioned the same thing, that police don’t come to the mansion.

“What if we found a way out?” I asked. “And exposed what’s going on to the public.”

Kate sat up and looked at me. “Do you think there’s a way out?”

“There has to be,” I said. “This place is enormous. There has to be another way out. What happens if we try to break the front door down?”

“Management will see you and they’ll take you to the Management Offices in the basement,” said Kate. “No one knows what happens to you if you get taken to the Management Offices.”

I wondered if that’s what happened to Yoongi. A shiver ran down my spine.

“We’ll find another way,” I said. “A back door or something. This place is huge though.”

“Yeah, I’ve gotten lost a few times,” said Kate. “It’s hard finding your way around. Plus, no one knows how big this mansion is. I bet no one has ever seen all of it before.”

“How many other boybands live here?” I asked.

“A lot,” she said. “I only knew about One Direction for a while, but I’ve seen the BTS guys a few times since then. Apparently, there’s a lot of others: NSYNC, the Jonas Brothers, Five Seconds of Summer, Big Time Rush, Boys to Men, The Backstreet Boys… There might be more but those are the big ones. I heard EXO lives somewhere on the fourth floor but no one has seen them yet.”

“My god…” I said. “That’s so many people. How have we not seen them yet? I’ve been wandering around for a while and I haven’t seen any sign of someone else until I met One Direction. And then you.”

“Like I said, this place is huge,” said Kate. “Bigger than either of us can probably even imagine. The One Direction guys have lived here for almost ten years and they haven’t really seen anyone else until BTS moved in.”

“That’s…” impossible wasn’t quite the right word, since there was living proof. All of a sudden, I was filled with anger. At who, I wasn’t so sure. At whoever kept these boys prisoner here for so long. At my mother, for handing me over to this fate just for rent money.

“How did you end up here?” I asked.

“My mom sold me to One Direction a few months ago,” she said. “We were about to be evicted from our apartment and I guess this was the best option.”

“My mom did the same thing!” I said. “She sold me to BTS!”

“What the hell is wrong with our moms?” Kate asked, shaking her head. “I guess it isn’t too bad. The 1D guys aren’t bad. Liam is a perv, but they can’t all be winners right?”

“Yeah, he is,” I said. “The BTS guys are nice. I don’t think they really know what’s going on though. And one of them went missing a while ago. They’ve been stressed over that and Jungkook got snippy with me over it.”

“Really? He’s usually the nicest,” said Kate. “I mean, they’re all fine, but he’s always been really sweet.”

“They’re really stressed out about Yoongi missing,” I said. “I think it’s a very touchy subject with them and I may have been pushing it. I don’t blame him for it.”

“I guess,” said Kate. She sighed again. “I just really want to get out of here.”

I thought about our options here. We could risk it with the front door, but the thought of getting taken to the Management Offices in the basement sent my stomach rolling. What if we gathered all the boybands together and formed a boy army? The management couldn’t stop us then. They’d most certainly be outnumbered, especially with how many boys would be involved who were in their physical prime. But who was to say we’d be able to find all the boybands here? And who was to say they’d all be on board with that plan?

“What about windows?” I asked, remembering the small windows in the boy’s bedrooms and the windows in that sitting room upstairs.

“They don’t open. And the glass doesn’t break,” Kate said. “Trust me, I’ve tried. Not to mention, there’s no windows on the first floor. So if we did somehow manage to get one open, we’d have to climb down somehow. And that’s only if management doesn’t find us first.”

“What if we went on a mission to find another exit? We’ll take something we can use as a marker, so we don’t get lost,” I said. “Chalk! We can use chalk to make X’s on the walls.”

“That could work,” she said. “And we can map it as we go. There has to be some kind of back door, or even a vent that leads outside.”

“There has to be,” I said. “Okay, so we have a plan. Let’s meet in the kitchen in two days, around noon. That should give us enough time to find some chalk. Then while we’re there, we can gather any other supplies we might need. Bring a backpack or something as well.”

It just so happened that I was able to find some chalk the very next day. It was Sunday, which was BTS’s day off from practices. They still had to study English though, so I volunteered myself as a conversation partner. I didn’t want to tell any of them about my plan with Kate in case they tried to talk me out of it. I thought Namjoon would most certainly try to talk me out of it. He seemed like the most responsible. However, there were other conversation topics that I could talk about.

I was sitting on Taehyung’s bed while he was searching through his closet for something. Jimin and Hoseok sat on the other bed, huddled over some notebooks. The fairy lights lining the walls were on, offering a soft light to the room.

“Do any of you know anything about the Management Offices?” I asked. Taehyung turned around to look at me with wide eyes. Jimin and Hoseok looked at each other.

“Yes,” said Hoseok. “They are…”

He looked up, searching for the words. He turned to Jimin and said something in Korean.

“English only right now,” I said, smiling.

“They are in…under…” he struggled.

“Basement,” said Taehyung. “We don’t go there.”

“But isn’t it just your managers down there?” I asked.

“Yes, but other managers,” said Jimin.

“Other managers too,” said Hoseok. “They do the locks.”

“The locks…you mean the front door?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Hoseok, nodding. “They control from basement.”

My mouth formed a little “o” as I took that information in. I needed more though.

“Are you guys allowed to leave this mansion?” I asked. They all shook their heads. Taehyung gave up looking through his closet and sat down on his bed next to me. “Have you tried to leave before?”

“Yoongi did,” said Hoseok. “When we came here. He was in the basement for days.”

My eyes went wide. “Did he tell you what happened to him down there?”

The boys stared at me for a moment. I could tell they were working through my question. Finally, Hoseok spoke.

“He said he didn’t know…remember,” he said. “He didn’t remember.”

“Have you guys met anyone else in this house?” I asked. My questions were rolling out of me and I had to make sure I was keeping them relatively simple.

“Yes, One Direction!” said Jimin.

“Liam is…” Taehyung was staring at his lap. I could tell he was trying to figure out how to translate what he wanted to say. He looked at Hoseok and said something in Korean.

“Oh, what is the word…” Taehyung said.

“A man who is…,” Hoseok said. “He is…he touch but doesn’t ask first.”

“Pervert,” I said. They all nodded. “Why? Did he do something?”

Jimin pointed at Taehyung, who had pressed his mouth into a firm line, nodding his head.

“He…” Taehyung struggled to find the words. Finally he gave up and mimed grabbing a butt. I grimaced. I was suddenly glad that all Liam did was say something to me.

“Have you seen anyone else in the mansion?” I asked. “Any other boybands? Or anyone else at all?”

Hoseok answered first.

“Our dance teacher,” he said. “And our staff. But only for shows.”

“Kate,” Taehyung said. My heart skipped a beat.

“Yes! Kate,” said Hoseok. “She’s nice.”

“She is,” I said. “I met her yesterday.”

I thought about my next question carefully. Yesterday, when I had pried, Jungkook had snapped at me for butting into their business. While it wasn’t exactly my place, I was too curious to let it go. So far, I was getting a lot of answers, so I felt as though I should keep going.

“What do you know about Yoongi’s disappearance?” I asked. They took a moment to answer. I could tell they didn’t quite understand all of it, but they got the gist.

“We don’t know where he is,” said Taehyung. “But…he wants to leave.”

“He wanted to leave,” said Hoseok. He spoke slowly, trying to properly get his point across. “We told him…not a good idea. But he hates the house.”

“Do you think Management has him?” I asked.

“We asked,” said Taehyung. “They said no.”

“So you guys think he went missing while trying to escape?” I asked. They nodded. Maybe Management did really have him…maybe they were keeping it a secret. I wondered if there was a way into the basement. I wanted to know what the deal was with this mysterious management. My eyes wandered to the wall. A string of Polaroid pictures hung over a small desk beside a chalkboard calendar. I did a double take when I saw the calendar. Notes were written in some of the boxes in chalk.

“Do you have extra chalk for your calendar?” I asked, pointing to it. Taehyung looked at the calendar and then back at me. He didn’t seem to understand what I was saying. I mimed writing and said, “Chalk.”

His eyes lit up with understanding as he leapt off the bed. He went to the desk and opened a drawer, pulling out a Crayola twelve pack of white chalk. He handed it to me and I looked it over. Only one stick was missing.

“Can I have this?” I asked. He nodded. “Thank you.”

Now all I needed was a backpack. I wasn’t sure where I would get one. All I had was my Aeropostale suitcase. The boys would be gone again next morning, maybe I could take a look around while they’re gone. The thought of snooping through their things to find a backpack to steal didn’t sit well with me, but I knew that it would be for the greater good. If I found a way out, I’d be able to find a way out for the boys as well. But once I escaped, how would I contact them?

“Can I give you guys my phone number?” I asked. They all nodded and we pulled out our phones, exchanging information. They also gave me Namjoon, Jin, Jungkook, and Yoongi’s phone numbers. I stared down at Yoongi’s contact information.

“He doesn’t answer,” said Hoseok. “For a long time.”

I nodded.

Dinner that evening was much less awkward than yesterday. The boys were friendlier and a bit more talkative after spending the day with me. I tried to focus on the conversation and the questions they sent my way but I couldn’t keep my mind from straying to my plans for tomorrow. What if something went wrong? What if I run into one of the boys tomorrow and they catch on to what I’m doing? What if Kate doesn’t show up? What if we get caught stealing food from the kitchen? I wondered if the boys have ever stolen food from the kitchen. Was that allowed? Or would Management catch them? What was allowed in this mansion? It didn’t matter. Once I found a way out, I’d come back to help them.

The next morning came quicker than I would have liked. Breakfast was already waiting for me in my room. I thought it was strange that I haven’t yet seen the maid who delivers my meals. Was she delivering meals to other people as well? Has anyone run into her before? I tucked that question away for later, making sure to ask Kate.

Kate. I was excited to see her again. Even though our mission would be stressful, I was looking forward to spending time with her. We barely talked when we first met, only discussing the mysteries surrounding the mansion. I knew we’d get plenty of time for talking once we started our mission.

After breakfast, I threw on my outfit for the day, a Hollister knit sweater and cute sweat pants. I wanted to be comfortable for our mission. I grabbed some extra toiletries and a spare t-shirt, setting it all aside for when I found a backpack. I made sure to also grab my phone charger.

Peeking my head out of my room, I found the hallway to be completely empty. The boys were already at dance practice. It was nearing ten thirty in the morning. I remembered hearing them getting ready for the day at around seven. I crept into the room I had spent the most time in yesterday: Taehyung and Namjoon’s bedroom. Namjoon’s closet was closed but Taehyung’s was open, clothes and stuffed animals spilling out onto the floor. I looked into his closet, trying not to move his things. I saw a pile of designer bags stuffed into the corner, a stray backpack strap sticking out of the side of the pile. Jackpot.

Once my things were packed away in the forest green Chanel backpack, I made my way downstairs. The kitchen, which was through the archway under the stairs in the foyer, was spacious and stylish. Faded blue tiles on the floor complimented the faded rust backsplash behind the sink area. There was lots of counter space and a brick oven against the door. There was a small dining table in the center of the room, which Kate was sitting at. She looked up at me when I entered the room.

“You’re early,” she said.

“You’re earlier,” I said with a giggle. “What did you manage to find?” 

Kate set her backpack on the table and opened it up.

“I did some exploring yesterday,” she said. “I didn’t find any chalk but I found a room full of paint and canvases.”

She pulled a few spray paint cans from the bag and some tubes of paint.

“Those are perfect!” I said.

“Plus, I found a big stash of snacks in Niall’s room,” she said. “So I grabbed as much as I could fit in the bag.”

“That’s good,” I said. “I was hoping to find stuff in this kitchen.”

I started searching through the cupboards in search of foods that I could carry in my backpack. Kate got up and helped me. We eventually found the pantry, which we raided, stuffing our backpacks with as much as they could hold.

“We’ll probably run into other kitchens along the way, so we should be good,” said Kate.

“Speaking of, do you get meals delivered to you?” I asked. “By a maid?”

“Yeah, why?” she said.

“Have you ever seen the maid?” I asked.

“No, I haven’t,” said Kate. “I’ve always thought that was really weird. I asked Harry about it once. None of the boys have seen the maid either. No one knows exactly who delivers our meals.”

“That’s crazy!” I said. “I can’t believe no one has seen the maid. I’m texting Namjoon. He might know. He’s the one who told me that a maid would bring me lunch the first day.”

I shot Namjoon a text, knowing he probably wouldn’t answer until they were all done for the day. I felt bad that I was leaving without telling them anything. They’ll probably be worried about me. I would have to text them at some point, to let them know what I was up to.

Once we grabbed as many supplies as we could carry in our backpacks, we left the kitchen to begin our journey. We took to the left corridors, marking small X’s on the wall every time we turned a corner or came to a fork. As we went, Kate tried to vaguely map out the house in a spiral notebook, using the foyer as our starting point. We had to use a compass on our phones at some point because after wandering the halls for a while, we lost all sense of direction. Our goal was to get to the back of the house.

“This part of the house is becoming less minimalist modern and more midcentury modern,” said Kate. I looked around at the hallway we were in. It still looked modern and stylish, but there was more color and cute decorations on wooden furniture. I hadn’t noticed the change at all.

“Are you an expert in interior design or something?” I asked, chuckling a bit. Kate’s ears turned red as she turned away from me. She scratched the back of her neck as she mumbled, “It’s just a hobby.”

She was unbearably cute like this, and I couldn’t look away. My smile was plastered on my face for the next few minutes. This hallway led us to a wide room with metal tables and chairs scattered around, much like a café or a restaurant. It was, of course, deserted, but it was cute nonetheless.

“Industrial modern…” Kate said under her breath as we wandered into the café. Past the tables and chairs was a counter with a cash register and glass pastry displays, which were empty. On the wall behind the counter were chalkboards, presumably for writing a menu. There was no menu written on it right now though. Instead, it was filled with notes and drawings, seemingly random strings of letters and numbers, and what looked like song lyrics. There seemed to be several different handwritings there, making it look chaotic, like mad ramblings. If I wasn’t already feeling uneasy, this would have done it.

“I wonder if this was ever an actual functioning café,” I said.

“I doubt it,” said Kate. “Based on the décor, it was made somewhat recently, but the tables and chairs and everything all have a layer of dust on them. Not to mention, there aren’t any scuffs or stains on anything. I’m guessing this café was built and then not touched at all since then.”

“My deductive reasoning skills have been showed up,” I said. “Meaning…I have no deductive reasoning skills. Let’s go to the kitchen. If the kitchen is stocked, it might tell us if someone ever intended to actually use this place as a café.”

We went behind the counter and through the double swinging doors. The kitchen was small, all stainless steel and industrial refrigerators. I opened one of the refrigerators, only to find it not only empty and spotless, but also turned off. That’s when I realized that everywhere we had gone so far, the lights were turned on.

“The lights are on everywhere we’ve been so far,” I said, turning to Kate. She thought for a moment then looked at me with wide eyes.

“You’re right,” she said. “I also haven’t seen any light switches.”

“But there are light switches in the bedrooms,” I said. We both started searching the walls of the kitchen for a light switch. We didn’t find one. At the back of the kitchen, there was another door. I tried the doorknob, finding it to be unlocked. It opened up to a dark, unfinished hallway. The ground was half cement and half hardwood. The light from the kitchen spilled into the hall, but it only reached so far. I pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight. The low ceiling was also unfinished, with some of the ceiling tiles missing. Wires and cords hung out of the ceiling, draping down onto the floor. As we moved further into the hallway, it got colder. I pushed a curtain of wires aside, my heart pounding in my chest.

Remembering our conversation about the lighting in the house, I shined my flashlight around looking for any kind of lighting or light switch. Nothing.

“It’s kind of strange how we were just talking about the lights being on everywhere we went, then finding a hallway without any lights,” said Kate.

“I was just thinking that,” I said. The long hallway finally came to an end with a turn to the left. We took the turn to find a similar dark hallway, this one with uneven wooden floors and doors lining the walls. I went to the first door and tried the doorknob. It was locked, but there was a little window, which I shined my flashlight into. It looked like a small, mostly empty room with a few metal chairs laying on their sides in the corner.

I almost leapt out of my skin when I felt something touch my hand, spinning around only to come face to face with Kate.

“Sorry,” she said. She looked terrified as she took my hand again. I squeezed her hand and let her stay close behind me as we kept moving. The hallway kept going, the temperature continuing to drop until it finally came to a metal door with a push bar and a small, wired window. I pushed open the door, finding a cement staircase that went up and down. It was still dark but somewhere upstairs, there seemed to be a flickering light. Kate pressed closer to me and grabbed my arm, her grip on my hand squeezing tighter.

“Should we go up?” I asked. “Or should we go back and find a different route?”

“This hallway was taking us in the right direction, so we should keep going, but I really don’t want to,” Kate said.

“We haven’t seen anyone for a long time,” I said, glancing at the time on my phone. It was nearing three in the afternoon. I realized that I haven’t eaten since breakfast. I was beginning to feel it. “We probably won’t run into anyone.”

“It’s not that,” she said. “Honestly I think I’d feel better if we did run into someone.”

“We can keep going until we find a place that’s better lit and nicer,” I said. “And then we can stop to eat and charge our phones. The flashlight is draining my battery. Up or down?”

“Up, oh god,” she said. “I’m not ready for the basement just yet.”

“Yeah, me neither,” I said. “Ready?”

Kate stared up the staircase for a moment before she nodded.

“Just stay close to me,” I said, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” she huffed as we started ascending the stairs. I turned my flashlight off once the flickering light above was enough for us to see with. We finally came to another metal door, presumably at the second floor. We opened the door and found ourselves in a dimly lit, dark wood paneled hallway. The hallway took us to a large, better lit room which was fairly bare except for a bed against the far wall.

“Weird,” I mumbled. Kate had yet to let go of my arm. I more than welcomed the close contact. Despite the brave face I was putting on, I was just as unsettled. We crossed the room and went through the archway into another hallway. This one was well lit, like the other halls and rooms we were in at the beginning of our adventure. These halls were paneled in the same dark wood, but were otherwise bare. They led us to a big sitting room with mustard yellow shag carpet and floral couches. Fake plants flanked the hearth. The room was dimly lit by oil rain lamps in the corners. I immediately started searching for an electrical outlet. I found one on the wall next to a green floral print couch.

Kate and I both practically fell into the couch, both sighing as our feet were relieved of our weight. I kicked my shoes off and started digging through my Chanel backpack. I pulled out my phone charger and plugged in my phone. It was almost three thirty. I had a text waiting for me on my lock screen from Namjoon.

_Namjoon: no, none of us have seen the maid. Jungkook claims that he’s seen her but none of us believe him since he can’t remember what she looked like._

I shared this information with Kate and that’s when I realized that I didn’t have Kate’s phone number.

“Can I have your phone number?” I asked. She nodded and we swapped phones to enter our information. Then we both pulled out some snacks and started eating. As I chewed on a granola bar, I eyed the room. The seventies décor was quite awful, but also charming in an odd way. The oil rain lamps looked like they were probably a fire hazard. The art on the wall was tacky; velvet paintings of jungle animals and scantily clad women. The brick fireplace had a fire poker stand next to the hearth. I bet those fire pokers hadn’t been used in many years. I wondered when the last time anyone has stepped foot in this room was. It was a bit chilly and there was a layer of dust coating pretty much everything. We must have been deeper into the mansion than I thought.

Once Kate had finished her packet of crackers, she got up and began looking around the room.

“This stuff is hideous,” she said as she stopped to look at one of the oil lamps. I joined her. Dust clung to the oily wires, making them look damp and fuzzy. I spotted a desk in the corner and went to it, opening the top drawer, which was empty.

“Luna, look,” Kate said, pressing up to my side. The nickname and the close contact sent my heart beating a little faster for some reason. I ignored it. Kate pointed at the surface of the desk. It was bare. “There’s finger prints in the dust.”

I looked closer and sure enough, there were four faint finger prints in the blanket of dust coating the desk top.

“There’s a thin coat of dust over them, so it must have been…maybe a week?” she said. “So there must have been someone in this room about a week ago.”

“Does that mean that there could be someone nearby?” I asked. “Maybe not though. A week is a long time. Whoever it was, they could be long gone by now.”

“Exactly,” said Kate. “We’ll just have to keep our eyes peeled from now on. There could be more evidence of someone nearby.”

I opened the next drawer. There was a small pad of paper, the kind one might find in a hotel room, and a ballpoint pen. I grabbed the pad of paper and pen, flipping through the pages. They were empty.

“The top few pages were torn off,” said Kate, pointing at the little lip of rubber holding the pages together. She took the pad of paper from me and looked closely at the top page. I watched with curiosity as she went to her backpack and pulled out a small makeup pallet.

“Why do you have that?” I asked.

“It was already in my backpack,” she said. “I never bothered taking it out.”

She used her finger to rub some dark eyeshadow onto the page. The eyeshadow settled over faint indentations in the page, revealing a message.

“Someone wrote something down and then tore out the page,” she said. “But the pen will always leave the message behind on the next page.”

“Have you ever thought about becoming a detective?” I asked with amusement. She huffed.

“That dream ended when my mom stopped helping me with my tuition and sold me to 1D,” Kate said bitterly. “As soon as I get out of here, I’m getting a job and moving out.”

“Yeah, I plan on doing the same thing,” I sighed. We both leaned over the desk, heads together, to read the note. We slowly read it simultaneously. “Safe behind Elvis. Key code. Won’t open.”

“There’s a doodle of some sort below that…” Kate said, squinting at the page.

“That’s not a doodle,” I said. “That’s Korean.”

Kate looked up at me with wide eyes and said, “Do you know what it says?”

I shook my head and ran to my phone, pulling up Google Translate. I struggled to type in the characters in the note, but it seemed to be just one word. Once I thought I had typed it in correctly, I hit the “translate” button. The word “chalkboard” appeared in the English side. Kate and I gasped and looked at each other.

“The chalkboard in the café!” I said. Kate’s face crumbled and she hung her head with a groan.

“I don’t like the idea of going back there,” she said.

“I can go,” I said. “I can run. I’ll take a picture and then come right back.”

“We shouldn’t split up,” she said.

“It’s the fastest way,” I said. “I remember what the ground looked like, I can get there fast without tripping up. Especially if you stayed here to look for Elvis, whatever that meant.”

Kate sighed and then shivered.

“I don’t like it,” she said. “But I’ll do it.”

I softened my expression and ran my hands down her arms, linking our fingers.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll go as fast as I can. If you want, you can wait for me in this room, call me if you need anything.”

She nodded.

“Yeah, I’m gonna wait here,” she said. “I don’t think I have the nerve to go off on my own.”

“We’re not in a hurry. We can look for Elvis when I get back,” I said, pulling her into a hug. She wrapped her arms around me tight and the faint smell of vanilla enveloped me. “I’ll be right back.”

Just then, I thought of something. I thought of kissing her before leaving. That thought alone sent my head spinning, but the way my heart rate picked up told me I would very much like to do that. I pulled away and then turned before that thought could take over.

“Wait!” Kate called. “Take this.”

She handed me a fire poker. I nodded and then left.

As I ran out of the room, the thought came to me again. I imagined how soft her lips would be. I imagined her hands in my hair. I imagined…

God, what was going on? I’ve only ever had thoughts like this about boys. Not that I had a problem with the idea of myself being bi, I was just surprised it took me so long to realize.

If anyone were responsible for my bi awakening, I was glad it was her. She was so perfect, and smart, and beautiful…

I burst through the ground floor stairwell door and stopped in my tracks. The hallway was just as pitch black as it was before, but this time I was alone and I hadn’t gotten my phone flashlight out yet. My heartrate picked up.

Once my light was on, I hurried to make my way down the hallway, all the way to the stainless steel kitchen. I burst through the double doors into the café, setting my sights on the chalkboard. I searched it for anything that could be a key code. Opening my phone camera, I bypassed the long ramblings and poetry, taking pictures of any numbers or short phrases or words. Taking one last look to make sure I didn’t miss anything, I finally nodded to myself and left.

When I got back to the sitting room, I found Kate sitting on the couch snacking from a bag of chips. I collapsed into the couch next to her with a massive sigh. The thoughts came back to me again and I tried to will away the heat rushing to my face.

“I got it,” I said with a grin. She smiled and handed me another bag of chips. I cracked it open and practically inhaled the whole bag. I hadn’t even realized how hungry I was. While we ate, I showed Kate the pictures I took.

“It could be anything,” she said. “I hope it’s not one of those locks that sets off an alarm if you get the code wrong too many times.”

“Yeah, that would suck,” I said. “But who would come if an alarm did sound?”

“You’re right,” said Kate. “There’s no one here. We’d just be locked out.”

Once we finished our pitiful excuse for dinner, we packed up our things and left the room through the doorway on the opposite wall. The fire poker was sticking up out of my backpack. The doorway led into another hallway. The walls were brick and the floor was unfinished plywood. There was no lighting at all in this hall, so once we were out of range of the light from the sitting room, we had to use our flashlights again. The hallway led us to a small round room, hallways going off in four different directions. I marked an X on the wall by the hallway we just came from.

“Which way?” I asked.

“Left,” said Kate, looking down at a compass on her phone. “We need to get back on track. Those last few hallways took us a little bit off course.”

I nodded and went to the left-most hallway, making an X beside it before entering. This hallway had doorways lining the left side, all with hinges on the frames but no doors. I shined my flashlight into each one. Every room was small, concrete, and completely empty. Some of them had debris in the corners, one had a folding chair sitting in the center. Kate grabbed my hand as we passed that one. The temperature continued to drop. The hall veered to the right and changed dramatically. Instead of unfinished concrete, this hallway had patterned wallpaper and decorative sconces lighting our way.

The hallway ended by opening up into a huge bedroom. The whole room was dimly lit and extremely tacky. A circular bed sat in the center of the far wall. The bed was draped in leopard print covers and had zebra print pillows. Against the left wall was a mini bar with dusty bottles and glasses sitting on the surface. Velvet paintings decorated the walls, clashing with the terrible black, orange and green wallpaper which also clashed with the faded rust colored shag carpet. But there was only one thing in the room which caught my eye.

The hideous velvet painting of Elvis right above the bed. I looked at Kate, who was also looking at the painting with wide eyes.

“It’s Elvis,” she said. We both clambered onto the bed and gently pulled the painting off the wall. Sure enough, there was cubby in the wall behind it, a metal safe sitting in the space. A little keypad rested in the center of the safe door. I hurried to pull up the pictures I took of the chalkboard. I looked through them, finally settling on a short set of numbers in the bottom corner of the board.

“This is probably it,” I said, zooming in and then typing them in. _74738\. _The keypad blinked red and very much did not open. “Okay, maybe not.”

I browsed the pictures once again, finding another set of numbers. _1104\. _Once again, it didn’t open.

“If it’s going to lock us out at all, it’ll give us three chances,” said Kate. “So let’s be careful with this one. It could be our last chance.” 

We squinted down at the pictures on my phone, zooming in on anything that looked like it could potentially be a code.

“Wait, what is that?” Kate asked, pointing to the corner of one of the pictures. There was a small passage written there. It looked like poetry or song lyrics.

“There’s no way that’s a code,” I said.

Kate ignored me and read it out loud. “Tell me am I gettin’ through, I keep hangin’ on, try to learn the song, but I never do…”

“Am I supposed to recognize that?” I asked.

“Look up those lyrics,” she said. I typed the lyrics into my browser.

“It’s an Elvis song!” I said. “They’re lyrics from Moody Blue!”

Kate typed in the number code correlating with “Moody Blue.” _666392583\. _The safe clicked open and we both cheered. I pulled the door open, revealing several things: an ancient looking bottle of fancy whiskey, a pearl necklace, a stack of cash, a revolver pistol and box of bullets, a ring of keys, and a photo. I grabbed the pistol and bullets, shoving them into my backpack. Kate grabbed the keys and cash. Then she picked up the photo. It was unframed and blurry, but we could faintly make out several people posing together at what looked like could be a wedding reception. Kate slipped it into a front pocket of her backpack.

“Just in case,” she said, shrugging. Before we left, I grabbed the pearl necklace and shoved it into a front pocket of the Chanel backpack. There was a restroom at the left end of the bedroom, which we both took advantage of. Kate went second.

“Luna, come look at this,” she said, poking her head out of the bathroom door. I went into the bathroom and she pointed at the wall next to the shower. A thin door blended into the wall, a little latch the only thing giving it away.

“It’s probably a toiletry closet,” I said, unlatching and opening it. It revealed a tight hallway, wallpapered with the same pattern as the bathroom.

“We could take this instead of going back to find another hallway,” said Kate. I nodded. We both grabbed our things and headed into the small hallway.

The hallway, after a while, veered to the left, then the right before ending in a fork.

“Right,” said Kate. We took the right hallway. The right hallway was completely cement and it ended with stairs going down.

“Oooh no,” Kate said, gripping my hand tight. “I don’t know about this.”

“It might not go to the basement,” I said. “We’re on the second floor. It might just go to the main floor.”

“Shit. Okay…okay.”

I led the way down the stairs, Kate’s hands wrapped around my arm. The stairs were cold cement the entire way down. The stairs seemed to keep going down and the temperature kept dropping. By the time we got to the bottom, we were both shivering and our breath fogged in front of us. Besides the concrete staircase and wall behind us, I couldn’t see anything but a bare cement floor. We must have been in a very big room because the range of light from my phone didn’t reach anything. I felt Kate’s grip on my arm tighten.

“Are we in the basement?” she whispered, her voice shaking.

“I think so,” I said. “We have to be.”

As much as I didn’t want to believe it, we had been going down those stairs for too long. It felt like we were way past the main floor.

“There’s nothing here,” Kate said. “Wasn’t there supposed to be offices or something?”

“If the basement layout is the same as the rest of the house, it’s probably just as massive,” I said. “The offices could be anywhere.”

“They wouldn’t be in a pitch black empty room,” said Kate. “Oh god, I don’t know what’s worse, stumbling around in this place or running into Management.”

“Just stay close to me,” I said. “It’s silent down here so if there’s anything nearby, we’ll hear them.”

Kate glanced at her compass and pointed straight ahead. As we walked, our footsteps echoed almost endlessly. Every small movement sounded enormous. The light of my flashlight still only revealed empty space all around us. My heart was pounding so hard, I wondered if Kate could hear it. I could hear Kate’s uneven breathing right behind me.

I felt Kate fall into me and whisper, “Fuck!”

I turned around. She had tripped on a wooden board and the sound rattled around us, bouncing off the cement.

After walking for what felt like an hour, the sound of dripping water hit our ears. We walked until we saw massive machinery blocking our way. It looked like they were giant boilers, tanks and tubes and dials. None of it was running, since it was still silent save for the dripping noise, which had grown louder.

I shuffled forward and the sound of sloshing water broke the silence. Kate and I startled before I realized that I was standing in a puddle. We walked along the boilers, the water on the ground getting deeper until I could feel it seeping through my shoes. I led the way between the boilers, the pair of us sloshing our way around machinery and stepping over pipes. Pretty soon, the water was ankle deep, then knee deep.

“How much further are we going to go?” I asked. “We can’t just keep walking through water.”

“This is the direction we need to be going,” said Kate. “We could go back upstairs and find a different route.”

“It’s okay. I don’t want to lose time,” I said. “It’s just really cold.”

“I know. I seriously hate it down here.”

I was listening to Kate’s sloshing footsteps behind me, slow but steady as she kept pace with me. But when I heard a splash, a muffled shout, and a metallic click, I was almost afraid to turn around. I did anyway.

“Make a sound and I’ll shoot.” The voice was deep. It belonged to a man who was currently holding Kate against him, a pistol pressed to her head and a hand over her mouth. He was wearing all black, a black face mask covering the bottom of his face and a baseball cap low on his head shrouding the top half.

“Turn off the light,” he demanded. I complied, figuring this wasn’t the time to argue or try to fight back. We were thrown into darkness. The only thing telling me that Kate was still there in front of me was her loud breathing and the sloshing of their feet.

“Listen carefully,” the man said quietly. “If either of you try anything, I’ll shoot her. Now tell me who you are and what you’re doing down here.”

“My name is Lunaria, her name is Kate,” I said, trying and failing to keep my voice from shaking. The man’s voice sounded vaguely familiar, but I didn’t dwell on it. “We’re trying to get to the back of the house and find a way out.”

The man huffed. “There is no back of the house. It just keeps going. Trying to find a way out is pointless.”

“That’s not possible!” I said, my stomach sinking. “The house can’t just keep going forever. That’s just not possible.”

“If there is a way out, it’s protected by Management,” said the man. “Are you both new here or something? Haven’t met Management yet?”

“Isn’t Management just the band managers?” I asked.

“You don’t know anything, do you?”

“I really don’t,” I said. “Please, just put the gun down. Please. I promise you we mean no harm.”

The man was silent. I still couldn’t see anything at all. I wondered if he could.  
“Pl-“

“_Sh_!” he hissed. My mouth clicked shut. I strained my ears for any sound coming from where I thought Kate and the man still were. That’s when I heard it. Faint sloshing echoing off of the boilers, getting closer by the second.

“Shit,” the man whispered. “Stay quiet and come with me.”

I felt a hand grab my wrist and tug me forward. I tried to keep my footsteps quiet but the sloshing of the water was inevitable. The man pulled me forward and then led me into a crouching position. I felt my phone buzz in my hand several times, lighting up with several texts.

“Put that away,” the man whispered so quietly I almost didn’t hear him. I shoved it into my back pocket. The boys have probably finished dinner and figured out that I’m not in my room. They’re probably wondering where I am right now. With every sloshing footstep that got closer to us, my heart sank further in my chest, beating so hard that it threatened to bruise my ribs. I wondered if the boys would ever see me again or if they would go on, never knowing what became of me. I wondered if I would die down here.

“They have to know where we are. They have to,” Kate said, barely even a whisper. “Every time we move it’s so loud.”

“Shut up,” the man hissed. I felt him shift in front of me. Up ahead, a light glinted off the surface of the water. Whoever was approaching us was holding a light source. They’d no doubt find us. We were doomed. A hand slipped into mine. Kate’s. She was shaking. As the light and the footsteps got even closer, all I could think about was the gun tucked away in my backpack. The light illuminated our area. I looked at Kate. She was watching the approaching figure with wide, terrified eyes. I looked at the man crouching close in front of me. I saw a subtle tremor in his shoulders as he also watched the approaching threat. Despite my own fear and despite our unfriendly meeting, I wanted to somehow comfort both of them. Especially Kate. I wanted nothing more than to be in one of those cozy, well-lit rooms, holding her close and protecting her from the world.

The footsteps stopped and I could see the person who was approaching. Whoever it was, they were big. Suddenly, the person turned around and shined the flashlight right at us. The man stood up and pointed his gun at the newcomer. I watched as his finger twitched against the trigger, but as soon as the newcomer came more into view, he hesitated, flinching and taking a step back. The broad stranger took advantage of the hesitance and rushed forward, tearing the gun from the man’s hand and shoving his head against the boiler with a sickening clang that resonated throughout the basement. The masked man’s body slumped to the ground, slipping under the water.

I stood up and put my body between the huge man and Kate. She screamed and I turned around. Two more men were behind us, one of them restraining Kate and lifting her off the ground as she struggled. The third man grabbed me before I could even think to react, restraining my arms in an iron grip. There was no way I could fight him, no matter how much I wanted to. All three men were huge. The first guy lifted the masked man out of the water and tossed him over his shoulder like a ragdoll. I watched him walk away. Kate was struggling in the arms of the other man.

Without thinking of the consequences, I slammed my head back, feeling it hit the man’s face. I heard a satisfying crunch, but my victory was short lived. The man grabbed a fist full of my hair and swung my head towards the boiler. The impact was dizzying. My hearing faded out into a dull ringing until my vision went black and I felt my legs give out.


	3. Chapter 3

I heard Kate’s voice before I fully woke up. I couldn’t understand what she was saying, but her voice was soothing nonetheless. In my half-dream state, I imagined where we were together. Am I waking up in the same bed as her? I panicked when I couldn’t remember the events of last night. Did we do something? While the thought of that sent my heart fluttering and million butterflies exploding in my stomach, I would have liked to remember. Either way, the thought of her being close made me want to reach out and pull her even closer. I groaned and reached a hand out. I felt her take my hand, but it was shaking. That’s when I registered that I was definitely not in a bed. Whatever I was laying on was cold and hard, and yet my head rested on something soft and warm.

I cracked my eyes open but immediately regretted it. The harsh light stung my eyes and made my head pound. Once I felt like my eyes were okay again, I made another attempt. As soon as I opened my eyes, I was greeted by Kate’s face looking down at me, her hair falling around her like a curtain. My head must be in her lap. I smiled at her, then knitted my eyebrows.

“Where are we?” I said, my voice coming out in a hoarse whisper.

“We’re in a cell,” she said. “We’ve been in here for about three hours.”

I remembered everything just then. The masked man, the three huge men finding us and knocking out the masked man. My own struggle with one of the men…he must have knocked me out. But there was another, more pressing matter. I sat up and looked Kate over.

“Did they hurt you?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “But you shouldn’t be moving around too fast. Your head…”

“I’m okay. It doesn’t hurt that bad,” I said, feeling around my head where I knew I was hit. There was an impressive bump in my scalp but no blood, which I was thankful for. Kate’s face was pinched up in an uncomfortable way. I cupped her cheeks and pulled her face closer so our foreheads were touching.

“Don’t worry,” I said softly. “We’ll be okay. We’ll get out of here.”

She sniffed and placed a hand on my wrist, rubbing her thumb over my goose bumped skin. I shifted so I could press a kiss to her forehead before standing up. My head spun and pounded for a few seconds, but once it cleared, I took a look around the room. It was dimly lit by a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. What looked to be a dusty intercom speaker was in the upper corner of the room. The room was cement and the only door was metal and looked heavy. Laying on the ground in the corner was the masked man. He seemed to still be unconscious. Beside him were our backpacks.

I wobbled over to him and sat down near his head, gently pulling the hat and face mask off. I gasped when I saw his face.

“Yoongi,” I whispered. I should have known. I knew his voice sounded familiar but at the time, the only thing I could focus on was getting Kate and myself away from that gun.

“You know him?” Kate asked, coming to sit on the other side of him. I nodded.

“Well, no not really,” I said. “He’s the missing BTS member. He’s been missing for weeks.”

“Has he been lost in the house this whole time?” Kate asked, mostly to herself. I ran a hand through Yoongi’s hair, praying my fingers wouldn’t come back with blood on them. They didn’t, but I found a bump near his right temple that matched my own. As gently as I could, I rolled him over onto his back and patted his cheek.

“Wake up,” I said. “Wake up Yoongi. We have a situation here.”

I patted his cheek again, and without opening his eyes, he flinched away from my hand, rolling his head to the side with a groan. I shook his shoulder in another attempt to wake him up. His eyebrows furrowed and he let out an uncomfortable sigh, then finally let his eyes crack open.

As soon as he laid eyes on Kate and I, he jolted upright and shoved away from us, pushing himself into the corner. His eyes darted back and forth between us. I held up my hands and tried to keep my voice calm.

“It’s okay, we’re really not going to hurt you,” I said.

“Where are we?” he asked, his voice rough.

“We’re in a cell,” said Kate. “They carried us a long way to get here. The water goes on for a long time. It’s a hallway with many cells the same as this. Only one of the cells besides ours is closed. The rest were open. I tried talking to those men but they didn’t react to anything. They barely even looked at me. I couldn’t tell if they heard me at all.”

“There were others?” Yoongi asked.

“Three altogether. All big and way stronger than any of us,” said Kate.

“I knew one of them,” said Yoongi, his eyes finding the cement floor. “The guy who knocked me out. His name is Kim Daejung. He’s Jungkook’s bodyguard. He didn’t even look like he recognized me. I know he got a clear view of my face too. But when I looked at him, his eyes just looked…dead.”

“Dead…that’s exactly what all three of them looked like. It was like they were all moving without thinking or hearing or seeing anything,” said Kate. The three of us were quiet for a long time before Yoongi broke the silence.

“Are you guys okay?” he asked. “Did they hurt either of you?”

“They knocked out Luna, just like they did with you,” said Kate. “They didn’t hurt me.”

Yoongi nodded and then winced. “My head is killing me. We need to get out of here. Have you guys already checked the door?”

“I just woke up,” I said, looking at Kate.

“Yeah, I checked it. I checked the whole room,” she said. “I didn’t see anything. The door won’t budge. There’s no opening in it. Nothing else in the room that could help us.”

A light buzz from my back pocket startled me. My phone! I reached back and grabbed it. The screen was cracked a bit at the corner and the battery was at about twenty percent, but it was otherwise unharmed. My lock screen told me that it was nearing one in the morning. It also showed me a string of texts from the boys. Three from Taehyung, five from Hoseok, one from Jungkook that looked like an apology, and several texts and missed calls from Namjoon. I felt bad ghosting them like this. I wondered if there was a chance they could help us out of this situation, but I didn’t want them getting in trouble or getting harmed in any way.

Yoongi was up and moving around the room, examining the walls and the doors.

“Are you going to text them back?” Kate asked, looking over my shoulder at my phone.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I don’t want them getting involved, especially now that it’s gotten so messy. Although…I’m wondering if I should tell them about Yoongi.”

Yoongi turned around at the sound of his name.

“Who are you talking about?” he asked.

“The other members,” I said, holding up my phone. “They’ve been really worried about you, you know. I think it’d be nice if they at least knew you were safe.”

Yoongi scoffed and said, “Don’t jump to conclusions. We don’t know what Management is gonna do to us.”

“You don’t want to talk to them?” I asked. His expression softened and he sighed.

“I do. I miss them. When we get out of here, I’ll talk to them. But right now, I don’t want to get their hopes up if Management is just going to kill us.”

“They wouldn’t kill you,” said Kate. “You’re relevant. They need you in the group.”

“Oh I’m sure they could make up some lie about me getting in a fight with someone and quitting. I’m just as expendable as anyone here. They’ve already threatened it once.”

Before I could get the chance to ask what he meant by that, the latch on the door squeaked and the door opened, revealing one of the men who attacked us. This one was a huge black man with a shaved head. He wore the same blank expression the other two men wore. In his hand was a tray with a loaf of bread and a pitcher of water on it.

As he was setting the tray down, the speaker in the corner crackled to life.

“Please thank Freight Train for bringing your dinner everyone,” a staticky, vaguely male voice said. After the three of them stared between the speaker and the guy in the doorway, the voice over the intercom spoke again. “_I said, say thank you!”_

“Thank you,” Kate and I muttered. Yoongi just glared at the man in the doorway, presumably Freight Train.

“You too, Min Yoongi,” the voice said. Yoongi’s narrowed eyes flickered to the speaker, but he still didn’t speak. Freight Train entered the room and grabbed Yoongi, twisting an arm behind his back until Yoongi let out a cry of pain, his knees buckling.

“Say ‘thank you for dinner, Freight Train,’” the voice said.

Through gritted teeth, Yoongi hissed out a quiet, “Thank you for dinner Freight Train.”

Freight Train let go of Yoongi, who would have fallen to the ground if I hadn’t rushed forward to catch him. He cradled his arm and was still gritting his teeth.

“Very good,” the voice crackled. Freight Train turned around and left the room, closing the door behind him. “You’re being such a good boy, unlike last time.”

“Fuck you!” Yoongi spat.

“Ah yes, love that. I just wanted to welcome you all to the basement. You should all know the rules: no one is allowed in the basement unless Management requests your presence here,” the voice said. “You all broke the rules, so I had no choice but to detain you. But here’s the deal: for you two lovely ladies, I can let you off with a warning since it’s your first time breaking the rules. I’m a fair man, I can give you a chance. But Yoongi…well, this is your second time breaking the rules, isn’t it? Do you remember what we talked about last time?”

Yoongi bristled and said, “I’ll die before you lay a fucking hand on any of them.”

The voice laughed, the sound coming through in a garbled crackle.

“You’re so cute,” it said. “Anyway, we were discussing punishment options. How about this: I’ll give you three options and the girls can choose which option they like best. So here we go: I have Fright Train break your arm, I have Mr. Daejung break cute little Jungkook’s arm, or I let the girls go and I keep you in here forever. I can tell the public you quit the band. I think those are all pretty fair in exchange for your freedom. So you girls decide and I’ll be back in an hour for the answer.”

The speaker crackled and then cut out, leaving the room ringing in silence.

“What the fuck…” I whispered. Yoongi stormed at the door and kicked it.

“Fuck!” he screamed. “Just let him break my arm, I don’t care. I just want to get out of this fucking place.”

“There has to be a way around this,” said Kate.

“I think I have an idea,” I said, lowering my voice. I was paranoid that the man over the speaker could still somehow hear us. “I have a gun in my backpack. If we say we want Freight Train to break Yoongi’s arm, not that we want that, he’ll come in here and we can shoot him and escape.”

The other two stared at me.

“You had a gun in your backpack this entire time?” Yoongi asked.

“How was I supposed to get to it without attracting attention? We didn’t know Freight Train would be coming. This time, we will. We’ll be prepared,” I said.

“This could work,” said Kate.

“Maybe,” said Yoongi. “We need to be clever about it. We should look around for a camera. If he can see us, it won’t work, but if he can only hear us, we have a chance.”

“Right, so if we do this, Freight Train will come in through the door. You’ll stand at the other side of the room so that he has to get away from the door to get to you. I’ll be by the door. When he gets close to you, I’ll… I’ll shoot him.”

“You don’t sound sure,” said Yoongi. “If you don’t think you can do this, we need to think of something else. We don’t have time for failure.”

“I can…” I hesitated, my stomach rolling at the thought of myself actually pulling the trigger on someone. What if I kill him?

“What if I distracted him?” said Kate. “He’ll come in, get close to Yoongi at the other side of the room to get him away from the door. I’ll jump on him and then you two can escape while he’s distracted.”

“What about you?” I asked. “How will you get out?”

“I won’t,” she said, her voice shaking.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Kate, who was afraid of being left alone when I went to take pictures of the chalkboard. Kate, who was afraid of a dark hallway. Sweet, sweet Kate was offering herself as a sacrifice.

“I’m not leaving you behind,” I said.

“But it’s our best chance,” she said. “You deserve to escape so you can get out of this god forsaken house.”

“No, Kate, I’m not leaving you. I can’t leave you,” I said. My heart broke as a tear slipped down her cheek. She took my hands.

“Trust me, I’m not worth it,” she said. I shook my head.

“Don’t say that,” I said. “_Don’t say that. _You’re worth it to me. I will shoot a hundred guys in the back if it means that you’re safe and at my side.”

Her face crumbled and her shoulders shook. I wrapped her up in my arms and held her as she hid her face in my chest.

“Don’t ever say stuff like that again,” I said. “You’re too important to me.”

“This is adorable, and I hate to break things up, but we’re running out of time,” said Yoongi.

“Right,” I said, pulling away and wiping my face with my sleeve. “We’re sticking with my plan. We’ll be by the door. You’ll lure him into the room. I’ll shoot him and we’ll all get out.”

Okay,” said Yoongi. “Let’s do it then.”

We went to work searching for a camera. We didn’t find one, but it still wasn’t reassuring. Anything could happen to thwart our plan.

An hour passed and the speaker crackled to life again.

“Have you decided?” the man asked.

I ran to stand beside the door, the gun in my hand. It felt heavy and I wondered if I would actually be able to shoot a person. Kate and Yoongi stood at the opposite end of the room from the door. I looked at Kate, her face still red and fear in her eyes. I knew I’d be able to do it.

“We’ve decided to have Freight Train break Yoongi’s arm,” said Kate, a slight shake in her voice.

“Very good, that’s what I was hoping to hear,” the voice said. “I didn’t want to have to break Jungkook’s arm, it would’ve set him back too much in practice. Freight Train will be there in just a moment. Once he’s done with you, you all can leave. Just make sure you go upstairs as soon as possible. I don’t want you guys snooping around down here and causing any more trouble. There should be a stairwell at the end of this hallway. Take it upstairs and don’t ever come down here again unless you are summoned. Understand?”

“Yes sir,” said Kate.

“I want to hear it from Yoongi,” the man said.

“I understand,” said Yoongi.

“I’m very pleased,” the voice said, then crackled out. I strained my ears for anything outside the door. Faint footsteps were approaching, getting louder and then stopping right outside. Kate took her place on the other side of the door. She looked at me and sent a small smile. I smiled back, despite the way my stomach was rolling with anticipation.

The door opened and I made sure I was behind it when Freight Train entered the room. The huge man paused a moment, then approached Yoongi who was at the other end of the cell. Kate inched towards the door. She had her backpack on, as did I. Right when Freight Train lifted his hands towards Yoongi, I came out of hiding and aimed my gun at the man’s back, hoping to hit him in the shoulder. My aim was as good as it was going to get and I didn’t have any more time.

I pulled the trigger.

The bullet tore into Freight Train’s left shoulder, making him stumble and fall to his knees. Without wasting any time at all, Yoongi leapt away from him and joined us as we rushed out the door into the hallway. The hallway was dimly lit, but we could tell which side of the hallway ended with a door and which ended with a fork. We ran as fast as our legs could carry us towards the door. Yoongi reached it first and pushed the door open, revealing a cement stairwell. Somewhere on one of the upper floors of the stairwell, a florescent light flickered.

We all took the stairs two at a time until we reached the third floor. We burst through the third floor door and stumbled into the room it let us out into. Breathing hard, I took a look around the room. It was a well-lit sitting room, which made all of us squint at the brightness. My head pounded again and stars danced in front of my eyes as the adrenaline slowly wore off. I looked behind me. Kate was breathing hard and looking around the room. Yoongi was bent over, his hands on his knees and his body swaying slightly.

The stars cleared and I made my way over to him, putting a hand on his back.

“You okay?” I asked. He nodded and stood up. The room we were in was cozy and modern, black couches accented with white throw pillows, a zebra pelt rug and a sleek fireplace with a flat screen TV mounted above it. Now that we were out of immediate danger, I went to Kate and did what I was longing to do the whole time we were down there. I pulled her into a tight hug, burying my face in her neck. She hugged me back just as tight.

A wave of affection hit me and I thought about kissing her for the second time that day. I didn’t, of course, but I wanted to.

Before I could dwell on this any further, Yoongi spoke up, thankfully breaking my train of thought.

“We shouldn’t stay here,” he said. “We’re not in the clear. We shot Freight Train. As soon as they find out, they’ll be after us.”

“Shit, you’re right,” I said. “Do we know where we are, or should we just get moving and hide out somewhere?”

“Let’s just get somewhere safe first and then figure out where we’re going from there,” said Kate.

Yoongi and I nodded and the three of us left the room, trying to get as far from the stairwell as we could get. We wound our way through hallways and rooms, finally coming to a cozy kitchen connected to a huge bedroom.

“Can we stop here?” I asked. Exhaustion dragged at my bones, my feet ached, and my stomach seemed to be trying to eat itself. In the bedroom, there was a long couch against one of the walls. I dropped my backpack onto the ground and collapsed into it, Kate and Yoongi doing the same on either side of me. My feet screamed in relief. I let my head fall against the back of the couch as I let out a long sigh.

“We need to eat,” said Kate. “We can’t keep going on empty stomachs, especially if we run into more trouble.”

We nodded but no one moved to get up. Finally, after several minutes, Yoongi got up with a long suffering groan and went to the kitchen. I followed, finding him leaning against the refrigerator door gazing at the contents. I came up next to him and peered into the fridge. There seemed to be quite a few fresh vegetables in the crisper, eggs, and a packet of chicken breasts.

“Check the pantry for rice,” Yoongi mumbled as he started pulling everything out of the fridge. I did as I was told, going to the pantry and searching the shelves. I didn’t find any rice but I did find pasta, which I grabbed a box of. After locating the pots and pans and the spice cabinet, we set about making fried rice with noodles instead of rice. The sound of sizzling meat and vegetables filled the air and the smell made my mouth water. The whole meal didn’t take very long and soon the three of us were sitting around the small table in the corner of the kitchen, shoveling our food.

“Sorry for not helping with the meal,” said Kate. “I’d just end up burning everything though.”

“It’s no problem,” I said around a mouthful of noodles.

“I’ll do the dishes,” she said, nudging my foot under the table and smiling at me. I smiled and looked down at my plate as I felt my face heat up. After dinner, and after the dishes were cleaned, we retired to the bedroom where we found the closet to be filled with clothes. We each grabbed a sweater and sweatpants, then took turns taking showers in the adjoined bathroom. Once we were clean and in comfy clothes, I searched the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, finding a bottle of Ibuprofen. I grabbed it and dumped out eight pills. I went to Yoongi and handed him four.

“For any inflammation,” I said. “Just in case. I don’t know if we could have concussions or not.”

He nodded and took them. I did the same, then walked around the entire room, making sure there weren’t any other doors. The only one seemed to be the one that led into the kitchen. I closed that one, locked it and then lodged a chair under the doorknob.

“We all need sleep. We can’t afford to stay up and keep watch. This should at least keep anyone out long enough for us to wake up,” I said.

“Do either of you have an iPhone charger?” asked Yoongi. I grabbed my phone charger out of my backpack and handed it to him. “Thank you. My phone has been dead for weeks.”

Yoongi plugged his phone in and then went to the couch, falling into it face first. I spotted a spare blanket folded over the back of the loveseat in the corner, which I grabbed and tossed at Yoongi, who didn’t respond. I sighed and draped it over him before looking towards the bed. Kate was also looking at it.

“I can take the loveseat,” she said. I held up a hand.

“We’re not doing this,” I said. “There’s enough room. We can share.”

The offer was automatic, but now that I imagined the two of us sharing a bed, I almost wanted to take it back. How was I going to survive with someone so perfect sleeping next to me? In the _same bed?_ Would I die? Maybe. Would I guiltily love every second of it? Absolutely. And with that, I climbed into the bed, huddling under the covers.

Kate climbed into the bed beside me and faced me, eyes flitting all over my face. Light snoring came from the couch and we both giggled.

“That was fast,” said Kate. I nodded. We stared at each other for a moment before Kate sighed and shuffled closer to me, tucking her head against my chest. My arms were still at my sides but they itched to do something. What, I wasn’t sure. Kate made the decision for me by grabbing my wrist and guiding my arm around her waist. I took this as permission to tighten my arm around her and pull her even closer, pressing a kiss to her forehead before closing my eyes. The last thing I heard before I drifted off was a soft sigh against my collarbone, which absolutely melted my entire heart.

I woke up to a warm weight in my arms and it took me a moment to remember. When I did, I cracked my eyes open and looked down at Kate, who was still sound asleep. I felt her steady breathing against my collarbone. My arms were tight around her and she had an arm thrown over my waist. She was so cute and so peaceful.

I would have liked to stay there forever, but I really had to pee. Not to mention, I wasn’t too keen on sharing this moment with a potentially awake Yoongi. So as gently as I could manage without waking her up, I extracted myself from our embrace and made sure Kate was covered as I left the bed. I glanced at the couch to see that Yoongi was also asleep, curled into a tight ball under the blanket, face smooshed into a throw pillow. On my way past, my eyes were drawn to his newly revived phone which was still buzzing with hundreds of notifications. I glanced at the time which told me it was almost noon. His phone was at a hundred percent, so I unplugged it and plugged in my own phone.

After using the restroom, I made my way into the kitchen. There were still eggs in the fridge and there was a nice loaf of bread in the pantry. I set about making eggs and toast and by the time it was done, Kate and Yoongi were shuffling into the kitchen, still sleepy and bleary eyed. Kate and I spent breakfast referring to and updating her map, which was beginning to take up several pages in the notebook. Yoongi spent it scrolling through all of his notifications, mumbling about most of them being nonsense from the group chat. With a quick look at his phone, I could tell that many of them were in fact memes, but it looked like a majority of the notifications were text after text and missed call after missed call from the other members. The most recent missed call was from Hoseok, at five o’clock this morning.

“So how should we proceed from here?” I asked.

“We should keep going,” said Kate. “I mean, we should continue our original mission. This whole ordeal was a setback, but we can’t just give up.”

“What was your mission?” asked Yoongi, not looking up from his phone.

“We were trying to find a way to the back of the house in order to find a back door of some sort so we can escape,” I said. He nodded.

“That’s sort of what I was trying to do,” said Yoongi. “But I left on an impulse. I wasn’t prepared for how big the house is. No food, charger, no clothes. It was… really bad.”

“What did that guy mean when he said this was your second time breaking the rules?” I asked. “You seemed to be familiar with him.”

“We moved in about three months ago,” he said. “After a while, I started to realize that they weren’t going to let us out of the house unless it was for company stuff. I tried to break down the door and Management caught me. They kept me in the basement for a long time.”

“Hoseok told me that you didn’t remember what happened to you while Management had you down there the first time,” I said.

“I lied. I just didn’t want to tell them,” said Yoongi. “I didn’t want them to worry. That guy threatened to hurt them if I broke the rules again. I tried sneaking away to find a different way out so they wouldn’t think I broke the rules again. I didn’t mean to go back into the basement, but I got lost down there and I couldn’t find a way back up.”

I nodded and then sat up, pulling out the small notebook we found in the desk.

“Were you the one who left this clue?” I asked, pointing to the spot on the page we found the word “chalkboard” written in Korean. Yoongi squinted at the paper, before looking at me with an incredulous expression.

“Well, it wasn’t meant to be a clue,” he said. “I never got into that safe by the way. Were you guys able to?”

“Yeah, that’s where we found the gun and a few other things,” I said. He nodded and then got up to wash his dish.

“I’m going to return Hobi’s call,” Yoongi said. “Just give me a minute, we can go after.”

He went into the bedroom and made the call. It sounded like Hoseok picked the phone up right away because I could hear their conversation almost immediately.

Kate was still sitting beside me, her plate forgotten as she hunched over her notebook, working on the map.

“I think the stairwell we escaped with was the same one we used after the café,” said Kate. “The flickering light gave it away. Which means we should be around this area.”

She showed me her map, gesturing at the area we were in. She sighed.

“If I’m right about that, then that means we were set back quite a ways,” she said.

“Don’t worry, we’re not in a hurry,” I said. Kate put her head in her hands.

“I am. I can’t stand this fucking house anymore,” she said, her voice wavering. “I hate it. I hate it so much. I want to go outside. I want to see my family again and my friends. I want to fucking be anywhere else but this house.”

She took in a shuddering breath and then let out a sob. I gently took her wrists and pulled her hands away from her face. Her eyes were glassy and a tear ran down her cheek. I held her hands and kissed her knuckles. Another tear fell and I reached over, wiping it with my thump. She put her hand on top of mine, holding it there on her face as she turned into my palm, her body shaking. I scooted my chair closer and pressed against her, pulling her head to my chest and holding her tight.

“I want to leave,” she whispered. “I want to leave so bad.”

I tightened my arms around her and said, “We will. We’ll get out. I promise you.”

“How can you promise that?” she asked. “What if we die in here?”

“We’re not going to die. And I won’t break my promise. We will get out,” I said. She sniffed and then pulled back a bit to look at me. Her eyes searched my face before landing on my lips, making my heart jump. She bit her lip as her hand slid from my shoulder to my neck. Her eyes stayed on my lips as she leaned forward. Was this really happening?

“They are so dramatic!” Yoongi’s voice startled us both as we broke apart and turned away from each other. He stopped in his tracks and looked between us. “Did I just interrupt something?”

“No,” Kate shook her head as she wiped her face on her sleeve. “No, you’re fine.”

Yoongi looked at me with a face that told me he knew exactly what he interrupted. My face was burning, I could have been redder than a tomato just then. 

“Sorry for…” Yoongi cleared his throat. “They want me to come back.”

“Are you going to?” I asked.

“No. I need to get the hell out of this house,” he said. “I need to find a way out so I can figure out how to get them out.”

“Yeah, that’s the plan,” I said. I turned to Kate. “Are you ready to keep moving?”

She nodded and closed her notebook. We packed our things and took a few more things from the closet. I noticed that all the clothing tags were the same. I looked at the tags on the sweats I was wearing. They were also the same. They all had the initials “J.T.” on them. Very curious. I wondered who lived here. Someone had to, since the fridge was stocked with fresh food.

Once we were stocked up on any other supplies we thought we would need, we left the kitchen and made our way back to the maze of hallways. Once again, Kate pulled up her compass and guided us. I felt like we were walking for hours, making our way through room after room. Eventually, the hallways seemed to become older looking, with wooden floors and peeling wallpaper. The air smelled stale here.

“Do you hear that?” asked Yoongi, stopping in his tracks. We stopped ahead of him, turning to look. His head was tilted to the side, face pinched in concentration. I strained my ears, but I couldn’t hear anything.

“I don’t hear anything,” I said.

“Me neither,” said Kate.

Yoongi nodded, even though he seemed to still be searching for the sound. We continued down the hallway, which seemed to be never ending. At some point, a small sound hit my ears, making me stop. The other two stopped as well.

“I hear it,” I said. Yoongi nodded.

“It’s getting louder,” he said.

“What is it?” asked Kate.

“I think it’s…a piano,” said Yoongi.

“A _piano?” _Kate asked. We all tried listening for it. I heard it faintly. Kate still didn’t hear it. We kept walking.

“I hear it,” Kate said. “But where is it coming from?”

“We seem to be getting close to it,” said Yoongi.

“It doesn’t make any sense though. Look at this hall, it looks like no one has stepped foot in here for years,” she said. “There’s been absolutely no sign of life since that kitchen.”

“It is strange,” I said, feeling a chill run up my spine. We continued down the hallway, the soft, eerie song slowly getting louder. I could hear it clearly now, though it was muffled. I recognized the song.

“This is…” I paused.

“_Yesterday_,” said Yoongi. “Beatles.”

“Yes!” I hummed along with the song, picking up the lyrics I knew. “Something wrong, now I long for yesterday…”

The song’s muffled, eerie notes carried us down the hall until we reached the door behind which it seemed the music was coming from. We all stared at the door, not daring to touch the door knob. “Yesterday” ended and “Let It Be” began, the melody slow and sad. I took a deep breath and stepped forward, grasping the doorknob and gently turning it.

I opened the door slowly, revealing a large room with a piano in the center. Sitting at the piano was Paul McCartney, head hanging, fingers gliding across the ivory keys. I gasped. Paul must have heard me, for he stopped playing and looked up.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you,” I said, Kate and Yoongi following me into the room.

“No worries,” said Paul, standing up from the bench. “I was just practicing is all. Had to exercise these old fingers.”

He held up his wrinkled hands, then let them drop.

“Do I know you?” he asked.

“No, you don’t know us,” I said, feeling breathless. “We’re just passing through. We’re trying to find a way out of the house. Do you know if there is one?”

Paul smiled sadly and sat back down at the piano.

“Stay for my next song, if you’re not in a hurry,” he said, gesturing towards a dusty couch in the corner. I looked at my companions. None of us seemed to be too keen on denying the man, so we sat, a cloud of dust rising around us from the cushions.

Paul began playing a song I didn’t recognize. It was melancholy and almost crooning. He played for several minutes, his head bowed, his fingers drifting over the keys. There were no lyrics, only the piano, but I still felt emotions well up inside of me. By the time the song ended, my eyes were burning with unshed tears.

“Did you like it?” he asked. I heard Kate sniffle.

“Yes,” I said, nodding.

“Beautiful,” said Yoongi.

“Thank you,” said Paul. I remembered then there was one other Beatle who was still alive.

“Where is Ringo?” I asked.

“Oh, he left to go to the bathroom a week ago, I haven’t seen him since,” said Paul. A confused look crossed his face. “Or maybe it was last year… you know, I’m not sure.”

We stared at him in silence.

“You should be moving along,” said Paul. “You have an important task ahead of you.”

We said our goodbyes and then left, feeling slightly more discouraged than before for some reason. As we continued our way down the hallway, the faint melody of “She Loves You” faded behind us. The hallway ended with a fork. We took the left hallway and kept moving in the direction that should be taking us to the back of the house.

I checked my phone, noting that it was nearing four o’clock in the afternoon. We’d been walking for hours. Several notifications cluttered up my lock screen. I closed my screen and put my phone away. If I was going to answer those boys, then it was going to be with a way out of the house.

“What if there is no end?” asked Kate. I grabbed her hand.

“There has to be. It’s impossible for this house to just keep going,” I said.

“Impossible is a strong word,” said Yoongi.

“So is the word ‘forever,’” I said. “Saying that something tangible on this earth is infinite is not logical. It’s not possible according to the laws of this earth.”

They both looked at me like I was crazy.

“That was…” said Kate.

“That was very logical,” said Yoongi.

“Thank you,” I said, feeling smug.

The hallway we were in turned to the left and changed from looking abandoned to a bit more warm and homey. Several rooms we passed looked like libraries or sitting rooms. Eventually, we came to a staircase, which we took down to the main floor. As six o’clock neared, we began discussing plans for settling down for the night.

“We should at least find a kitchen soon,” said Yoongi. “I can’t live off of peanut butter crackers and-”

He stopped mid-sentence as he stared ahead of him. Then he took off, running ahead of us at full speed. We tried to keep up but he was fast. Finally, I saw what he was running towards: a door with a shaded window, sunlight peeking under the shade. Yoongi got there first, pushing the shade up and looking out the window. We joined him, looking out at the three stairs leading to a dirt path. The path led into the woods. Above the trees was the sun, slowly disappearing below the canopy. Yoongi tried the doorknob but it wouldn’t budge. I looked around the hall we were in. There wasn’t much in the hall except for sconces along the walls to provide lighting.

Yoongi ran to one of the sconces and tore it off of the wall, disregarding the chunk of drywall stuck to the mount and the wires hanging out of the back. He slammed the metal sconce against the window in the door, but it barely even left a scuff on the glass. He tried again and again, the window not budging.

I grabbed his arms and put a hand on the sconce.

“Yoongi,” I said. “Stop, it’s not gonna work. Let’s try to break the lock.”

I looked at the doorknob, which didn’t seem to have any kind of lock around it. But the doorknob itself was secured to the door with two screws.

“Do either of you happen to have a screwdriver?” I asked. They shook their heads. “A dime? Or a penny?”

Kate pulled her backpack off and dug through it, finally producing a wallet, which she dumped the change out of. She handed me a dime, which I used to unscrew the screws. It wasn’t perfect, but it got the job done, because pretty soon, I was pulling the last screw out and the doorknob fell off…revealing nothing.

There was no hole or latch mechanism or anything, just the wood of the door.

“The doorknob was fake?” Kate whispered. Yoongi let the sconce in his hand drop to the floor with a thud. Kate approached the door and began feeling around the doorframe with shaking hands. “That’s not… there has to be a way. Maybe we can… if we find something we can use to pry the door open, like a crowbar…”

Yoongi stepped back up to the door and tried slamming his shoulder into it. It didn’t budge at all.

“Fuck,” he hissed, holding his shoulder.

The slam of a door coming from behind us made us nearly jump out of our skins. We turned around just in time to see three huge men, the same men from the basement, round the corner of the hallway and lumber towards us. One of them was Freight Train, white bandages wrapped around his shoulder and chest.

“Fuck,” Yoongi said louder.

“We’re screwed,” said Kate.

The men started running at us. There was nowhere for us to go and the next thing I knew, a black bag was being shoved over my head and I felt myself being lifted and slung over a shoulder. I swore and pounded on the guy’s back but my efforts were fruitless. No matter how I struggled, I received no reaction. I heard the others nearby, also yelling.

We were carried for quite a ways before I was finally set down into a chair, where I felt my hands being pulled behind me and tied together. The black bag was torn off my head unceremoniously and I had to squint, even though the room I was in wasn’t very bright. I looked around, immediately finding Kate and Yoongi on either side of me, also tied to their chairs, bags taken off their heads. Yoongi glared through his ruffled hair as he struggled against his restraints. Kate sniffled as she tried to hold back the panic I could see building in her.

The room we were in was completely metal; metal grate flooring, pipes crisscrossing over the walls and creating a low ceiling. A blinking control panel took up the entire left wall. The three men who carried us left the room, heading up the metal staircase to the right. A wide pillar rose up in the middle of the room in front of us, blocking the view from the rest of the room. A small table stood in front of the pillar and a little speaker sat on the table. The speaker crackled to life and a familiar voice came through.

“Well, well, well,” the voice said. “What naughty boys and girls you’ve all been.”

“What are you going to do with us?” I asked, keeping my voice strong despite the dread crawling through my veins.

“What am I going to do with you?” the voice asked. “Well let’s see, the three of you have broken the rules already, Yoongi many times. You shot trusty ole’ Freight Train and got away without Yoongi getting his punishment. I was not happy about that. Not to mention, the three of you just tried to break down a door! That’s a big no no! I think Yoongi should get his punishment that he missed last time, and then he can choose a punishment for you girls.”

“You’re a sick bastard,” Yoongi growled.

“Yes, yes, you’ve said that,” he said. “Daejung will be by in a moment to take care of Yoongi. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a few choices. Daejung can break their arms as well, you can shoot them with that handy little gun of yours you used on Freight Train, or we can hook them up to my machine to give them a little ride. It’s up to you, my dear boy. Afterwards, you’ll be staying down here while I let the girls go. This is your third strike, Yoongi. You’re out.” 

“You’re not very inspired today, huh?” Yoongi said.

The speaker clicked off without a response. Yoongi hung his head. Kate was crying.

“Choose to shoot us, that way-” I began.

“Yeah, obviously,” said Yoongi.

“He’s still going to break your arm,” said Kate.

“It’s fine,” he gritted out.

“It’s not fine!” she said. “None of this is fine!”

Heavy footsteps echoed above us, moving towards the top of the stairs. The speaker crackled back on as Daejung began walking down the stairs.

“Have you made a decision?” the voice said.

“I’ll shoot them,” said Yoongi.

“Wow! I love that,” he said. “Very well.”

Daejung went to Yoongi’s chair and untied him, pulling him up by the arm. The man didn’t waste any time gripping Yoongi’s forearm and snapping it like a twig. The crack echoed throughout the room, ringing painfully in my ears before being drowned by his scream.

I gagged and looked away. Kate whimpered and hung her head, seemingly trying to fold into herself. Daejung let go of Yoongi, who fell to his knees, his left arm hanging limply. The man reached behind him and pulled out a familiar revolver handgun, pressing it into Yoongi’s right hand. Yoongi didn’t even look up. Ragged breaths tore from his chest.

Finally, he lifted his arm and pointed the gun at me, his hand shaking. He looked up at me through sweaty bangs. I knew he wouldn’t shoot, but the feeling of having a gun pointed at me was scarier than almost anything I’ve ever experienced, no matter who was holding it. I flicked my eyes over to where Daejung was, then back at him. Yoongi blinked heavily, then swung his arm behind him and shot. The bullet tore through the left side of Daejung’s head, taking his eye with it. He immediately slumped to the floor.

Yoongi gasped and dropped the gun, scooting away from the mess. Through my own wave of nausea and ringing in my ears, I heard Kate weeping beside me. I also heard Yoongi hyperventilating, still sitting on the ground, his head between his knees.

“Yoongi,” I said, my voice hoarse. I tried to nudge him with my foot. “Breathe. Hey, I need you to breathe. Yoongi, take deep breaths.”

He struggled for a moment, but soon he was sucking in ragged but slow breaths.

“You need to untie us,” I said, trying to clear my throat. “We need to get out of here.”

Yoongi took a while longer to gather himself before struggling to his feet. He swayed a bit when he got to his feet, but then went over to my chair and untied me. As soon as my hands were free, I stood up and grabbed him by the shoulders, guiding him into the chair. I went to Kate and untied her, then grabbed the gun, putting it into the back of my waistband.

Kate was still crying, hands fluttering uselessly around Yoongi’s slowly purpling arm. I took her face in my hands and wiped her tears.

“I’ll take care of things,” I said. “Please keep your eyes on me no matter what, okay?”

She nodded. I knelt down in front of Yoongi and tried to catch his eyes, but they were unfocused. His face was sheet white and sweat was beading along his forehead and his upper lip. I tapped his cheek and said, “Yoongi, look at me.”

His eyes flicked up and found mine. His breathing was becoming shallow.

“Yoongi, I need you to take deep breaths for me,” I said. I took his right hand and put it against my chest, trying to take deep, steady breaths. My false calm was becoming more and more difficult to hold up the more I thought about our situation. “Breathe with me.”

His breathing became slower and I thought he was doing well until he made a choking sound in the back of his throat and fell forward. I eased him onto the ground just in time for him to empty his stomach onto the floor between us. I cringed and looked away, but it seemed to help since his breathing became steadier afterwards and a bit of color returned to his face.

“Will you be okay?” I asked, a hand on his shoulder as he pulled himself back into the chair.

“Yeah, just give me a minute,” he said.

“Okay, Kate, I need you to stay here and keep an eye on him,” I said, taking her shoulders. “I’m going to go find our backpacks. Just don’t look over there. Keep your eyes on him. I’ll be right back.”

“No! We shouldn’t split up,” she said. “Please don’t leave.”

“I won’t go far,” I said. “If I’m gone for more than ten minutes, I want you guys to call Namjoon. I know we didn’t want them involved, but he’ll know what to do. He’ll be able to help you.”

Kate took a deep breath and then hugged me. She pulled away, then leaned back in and pressed her lips to mine.

My heart leapt and all other thoughts disappeared for a moment, other than the thought that her lips were softer than I imagined. The kiss was chaste, but it was still perfect.

“Please come back,” said Kate.

“I promise,” I said. I tore myself away from her and turned to the stairs, pointedly keeping my gaze away from the body on the ground. I still caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye and my stomach turned. I hurriedly made my way up the stairs and froze at what I saw.

Freight Train and the other man who brought us here were sitting in chairs connected to a massive machine in the middle of the room. Tubes and pipes ran around the machine, blinking lights and buttons peeking through. The machine was circular, with chairs all around it and other similarly built men sitting in those chairs. The thing that made me stop and stare was the fact that every one of the men wore a helmet that covered their eyes, thick tubes protruding from the helmets and connecting to the machine.

What was this? Was this the reason those men were so blank and emotionless? Was this some kind of brainwashing machine?

I pushed those questions aside when I remembered why I was here. Keeping my eye on the men around the machine, I started searching the room for our backpacks. It didn’t take me long because they were propped up in the corner. I grabbed them and then ran back downstairs. I momentarily forgot what was at the bottom of the stairs and when I caught full sight of it, I almost reeled back and lost my footing. The scene was gruesome and I immediately averted my eyes, my stomach rolling uncomfortably. I hurried back to Kate and Yoongi, dropping the backpacks and beginning to dig through them for a water bottle. I found one and unscrewed the cap, pressing it into Yoongi’s hand.

“Can you do this yourself?” I asked. He nodded and I let go of his hand. “Small sips.”

He did as he was told as I dug through the Chanel backpack for a sweater. Thankfully my old one was still in there. Once Yoongi was finished, I took the water bottle and handed it to Kate. Then I reached for Yoongi’s broken arm. 

“Wait, wait,” he said. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to make a sling,” I said, showing him the sweater. “I don’t have anything to use as a splint so we can’t do anything else but get it secured for now.”

“Okay,” he said, taking deep breaths.

I gently took his wrist and guided his arm up into a bent position.

“FffFfffuck…” he gasped , grabbing my shoulder so tightly it would probably leave bruises.

I slipped the sweater around his arm, wrapping one of the sleeves around his wrist before tying them behind his neck.

“Okay?” I asked. He nodded. “Alright, let’s get moving.”

“Where will we go?” asked Kate. “We don’t know where we are.”

“I wanna find this fucker who can’t even talk to us in person,” I said. “I want to find the Management offices.”

“Shit, let’s do it,” said Yoongi.

“Are you guys insane?” Kate asked. “You have a broken arm for crying out loud! What are we gonna do if we find him?”

“I’m gonna kill that bastard,” said Yoongi.

“No you’re not,” said Kate. “You couldn’t even stand up a second ago.”

“I’m fine now,” he said.

“I want to talk to him in person,” I said. “Maybe try to strike some sort of deal.”

“Let’s go,” said Yoongi, heaving himself out of the chair.

“Guys, wait,” Kate said, moving in front of us and holding out her hands. “We can still find a way out. There might be a way outside from down here. Should we really be instigating more violence?”

“I need to confront him,” I said. “He’s the one controlling everything, right? If we get into his office, we could figure how he’s controlling the doors and everything.”

“Right. And we can give him a beating for everything he put us through,” said Yoongi.

I closed up my backpack and slung it onto my back. Kate did the same, mumbling about how crazy we were. We explored the rest of the room, only finding another long control panel at the other end. We went up the stairs and passed the brainwashing machine. At the other end of the room there was a short hallway leading to a massive metal door with a vault-like hand wheel in the center. I approached it and turned the wheel, the rusted metal squealing and echoing throughout the metal room. The door was heavy, but I managed to pull it open enough for us to slip through.

On the other side was a cavernous circular room, well-lit with a black and white checkered tile floor and doors lining the walls. Each door had a nameplate on it below a curtained window. We passed by several doors, reading the names out loud.

“Lou Pearlman, Gustavo Kramer Rocque, Bang PD…” I read.

“These are managers,” said Yoongi. “Bang PD is our manager.”

“These are the Management Offices then,” I said.

There was one door at the center point of the room. This door had a nameplate above it reading “Manager.” If any of these doors were going to lead to the man over the speaker, this was it. I led the way up to the door, grasping the brass doorknob and slowly turning it. I listened closely. When I didn’t hear anything, I opened the door further and peeked inside.

It was a very spacious office, dark red carpet, wood paneled walls, a generous amount of floor space leading up to the grand desk. Behind the desk was a tall leather chair, which turned around as soon as I entered the room. The man sitting in the chair was young, perhaps in his thirties. He was professional looking, with slicked hair and a pristine suit. On the wall behind him was a very large portrait of him sitting in his office chair the same way he was doing right now. He smiled a sickening smile at us.

“You finally made it,” he said, his voice sounding the same despite the lack of heavy static. The same pitch and deadly lilt to his tone.

“You were expecting us?” I asked. The three of us entered the office fully, the door slamming closed behind us.

“Certainly,” he said. “I’ve been keeping tabs.”

“You mean there are cameras around this house?” I asked, my suspicions being confirmed.

The Manager chuckled. “Oh no, no cameras,” he said. “Why don’t you ask your friend Kate here. She’d know all about it.”

I looked at Kate, who was staring at the carpet. Her jaw was clenched and I could see tears in the corner of her eye.

“Kate, what is he talking about?” I asked.

“I didn’t…he…” she struggled.

“He means she’s a spy,” said Yoongi, turning to Kate. “I knew something was up with you. I shouldn’t have ignored it.”

“Very good, Yoongi,” the Manager said.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Kate was a spy? How? Since when? My mind was reeling with questions.

“She’s been with us the entire time,” I said. “I… she can’t be a spy. What was she trying to do if she was working with you this whole time?”

“I wanted her to bring you two here,” the Manager said. “Terrible job. Lots of procrastination. But she did it in the end. Good girl, Kate.”

“I wanted to tell you,” she said. “I’m sorry, I tried to stop-”

“Yes, yes, we all know,” said the Manager.

I remembered when she tried to sacrifice herself in the cell. She said that she wasn’t worth it. Her desperation to get out of the mansion as fast as possible. And how she tried to convince us not to go to the offices. It was all starting to make sense. I knew her. I trusted her. She…

She kissed me.

And she’s been lying to me.

She was setting us up this whole time.

“Well, now that you’re all here, I think it’s time to take care of things once and for all,” the Manager clapped his hands once, making us all jump. “Lunaria, I had hoped you would have been good company for the boys but you ended up being a poor investment. Yoongi, I really can’t let you go another time. You two will just have to die. I’ll make something up about you quitting BTS. Kate, since your mission is officially completed, I’ll grant you your freedom. You took a long time and you weren’t the best spy, but you did it.”

“You don’t have to kill them, we can work something else out,” Kate pleaded.

The Manager ignored her as he went into a drawer in his desk and pulled a hand gun out. He stood up and came around his desk.

“Who’s first?” he asked, looking between me and Yoongi.

I looked over at Yoongi. He had a deep scowl on his face. Neither of us moved.

“Very well,” he said, lifting his gun and pointing it right at me. 

Faster than any of us could react, Kate lunged at me and pulled the gun from the back of my pants. She aimed it at the Manager and shot. The bullet hit him square in the shoulder, but he barely even stumbled. He looked down at the bullet wound and scoffed.

“How troublesome,” he said. He lifted the gun again and shot at Kate, hitting her in the shoulder, the same place his wound was. She gasped and crumpled to the ground. Suddenly I didn’t care that she was a spy, or a traitor or anything. I loved her. I still loved her. She didn’t want to turn us in. She was trying to get us to run when we wanted to find the office. I didn’t care what she did before everything. None of it mattered. The only thing that mattered was that Kate, the girl I loved, was on the ground, bleeding from a gunshot wound in her shoulder.

Without thinking, I lunged for the gun Kate had dropped. I heard a gunshot ring out and I felt something push me to the ground from my shoulder. I ignored it, rolling over and aiming the gun at the Manager. I didn’t waste any time. I pulled the trigger and watched in awe as the bullet hit its mark; right between the eyes.

The Manager took one step back before falling to the ground, his eyes wide and his mouth open. I dropped the gun and knelt at Kate’s side. She was on her back, blood gushing from the wound in her shoulder. I pressed my hands to the wound, hoping to quell the bleeding. She cried out when I pressed down on it.

“I’m sorry. Kate, I’m sorry, but you’re bleeding a lot,” I said.

“You were shot in the back,” said Yoongi. I looked up at him as he knelt behind me, opening my backpack.

“What?” I said.

“You were shot in the back,” he said. “I saw it hit you. You fell.”

“I don’t feel anything,” I said. He paused in his digging through my backpack and pulled out the iron fire poker. He showed it to me. A bullet was lodged in the newly bent metal. He let it drop and continued his search through my backpack. He finally pulled a shirt out and held it over Kate’s wound. I let him slide it into place, moving my hands just enough to press down on the shirt.

“What do we do?” I asked. “We can’t move her, can we?”

“We have to,” he said. “We have to find a way to stop the bleeding at least a little bit.”

“Duct tape!” I said. “Look in the desk for duct tape! And scissors!”

Yoongi stood up and ran to the desk, flinging drawers open and rifling through them. In a stroke of magnificent luck, Yoongi stood up after searching the last drawer, scissors and a roll of duct tape in his hand. He ran back and started using his teeth to pull off a strip. I took the scissors from him.

“Kate, I’m going to cut your shirt off over here so I can get to the wound,” I said. She nodded, her eyes squeezed closed. I removed my hands and took the shirt I was using away. It was soaked in blood. As carefully and quickly as I could, I cut away Kate’s shirt, exposing the bullet wound. The sight of it sent my head reeling. I didn’t have time to linger on it though. I took the strip of tape from Yoongi and tried to push the wound closed, laying the tape over it. Yoongi used the spare shirt to wipe away blood around the area before handing me another strip, which I laid over top of the first strip.

“Is there another shirt in my bag?” I asked. Yoongi went searching for another shirt, pulling out a pair of soft shorts.

“Will these do?” he asked. I nodded and took them from him. I pressed them against the tape-covered wound, then tore another long strip of tape off.

“Help me prop her up,” I said. Yoongi got behind Kate and lifted her into a sitting position. She whimpered as she was jostled. I wrapped the tape around her chest and shoulder, securing the shorts against her shoulder. “Keep her upright.”

Yoongi nodded, shifting to prop her up against him. I then took my backpack off and looked for another water bottle, finding one at the bottom of the bag. I unscrewed it and rinsed off my hands as best I could. Then I lifted the bottle to her lips.

“Small sips,” I said.

“We have to find a way out of here so we can call an ambulance,” said Yoongi. “I don’t think we’ll make it in time.”

“He’s dead, we can find out how he was controlling the locks,” I said.

“We need to do it fast then,” said Yoongi. “I think I’m gonna call Namjoon.”

“Okay. I’ll go look,” I said. I took Kate’s face in my hands. She cracked an eye open and looked at me. “Kate, you’re going to be okay. I love you. Please stay awake.”

She whimpered and closed her eyes again. I kissed her and said, “Promise me you’ll stay awake?”

“I p-promise,” she whispered.

I got up and left as Yoongi was pulling his phone out. I ran to the desk and examined its surface. It was clean, the shining wood without a speck of dust on it. I looked under the desk. I looked in the drawers. There had to be some kind of control panel or button somewhere.

“Lunaria! Joon-ah said that he has a personal exit in his office,” Yoongi shouted.

I looked around the office but I didn’t see any kind of door.

“Does he know where?” I asked, almost frantically. Yoongi asked and then shook his head.

“We have to find it fast. They called an ambulance but we have to get outside,” said Yoongi.

I wracked my brain as I looked about the room. There had to be something. I ran the perimeter of the room, looking for seams in the wall. Nothing. I got back to the desk again and examined the desktop one more time. A very fine seam ran through the middle of the desk, creating a rectangular panel. I tried prying at it but it wouldn’t budge.

“What else is on the desk?” Yoongi asked.

“Just an inkwell and this name plate,” I said. The nameplate said “MANAGER” on it and the inkwell held a black fountain pen.

“The inkwell,” he said. “Try that.”

I had no idea what he thought I would do with it, but as soon as I moved the pen in the well, the panel in the desk flipped over to reveal a small blinking control panel.

“Holy shit!” I laughed. “I think this is it!”

The buttons that were labeled were for the front door, east wing door, west back door, garage, and east back door. The rest were unlabeled. I hit the front door button.

“Tell him to try the front door,” I said. I pressed the rest of the buttons, even the unlabeled ones, hoping something would happen. After pressing the last button, I heard a click behind me. I turned around and saw the giant painting slowly swinging open from the wall, revealing a staircase going up.

“Is that it?” asked Yoongi.

“I don’t know, I’m gonna check real fast,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

I ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. There was a door at the top of the stairs, which I burst through, stumbling down a step and into grass. I held my breath as I looked around. I was kneeling in grass, it was dark but the moon was full above me. An open air garage sat a few paces from me, a shiny black Cadillac sitting under it. A dirt driveway extended off to the left and forest surrounded everything.

I took a deep breath, not realizing how much I missed the fresh air.

I couldn’t waste any more time though. I ran back into the house and back down the stairs, a smile on my face so wide it made my cheeks sore.

“It leads outside,” I said breathlessly. “I actually got outside.”

“Okay, let’s go,” said Yoongi. He put the phone on speaker and stuffed it into his back pocket. I could hear voices talking over each other on the line. The two of us gently lifted Kate to her feet and half carried her up the stairs and outside. As soon as the night air hit us, Kate’s legs gave out and we fell to our knees. I could hear sirens but they were faint.

“Are you guys outside yet?” Namjoon asked through the phone.

“Yes. We made it,” I said.

“They’re pulling up near the front entrance,” he said. “Do you guys know where you are?”

“No, but we can hear the sirens,” I said. “We’ll follow the noise.”

We stood back up and walked along the dirt driveway, the sirens getting closer. Every now and then, Kate would stumble and we’d have to pull her along. The driveway led us to the road, which we followed until the front drive came into view, the flashing lights of emergency vehicles a beacon in the dark. As we got closer, we saw several people standing outside, some on the porch, some speaking with the paramedics and officers.

That’s when they saw us. Three paramedics came running over to us with a stretcher. The boys, all six of them, followed close behind. As soon as Kate was taken from us and deposited onto the stretcher, the boys engulfed Yoongi into a massive group hug. Despite his loud complaints that they were jostling his arm, I could see Yoongi’s smile from where I was. We got to the front entrance and I tried to see where they were taking Kate. She was being loaded up into the ambulance. Other paramedics were leading Yoongi to sit on the bumper of the ambulance, one woman staying to examine his head and arm. I sat down next to him.

“She hit her head too,” said Yoongi.

“You two will ride with your friend,” she said. “We’ll check for concussions when we get there.”

Soon, we were all piled into the ambulance, Yoongi, Namjoon and I pressed together on the bench along the side of the cabin. The other boys were going to meet us there. I watched the mansion disappear through the back window, hoping I would never have to go back there again.

“We’re free,” said Yoongi. I looked over at him. He too was watching the mansion out the window. I took his hand. Then I took Kate’s hand. She turned her head in my direction and sent me a weak smile.

“We’re free,” I said.


	4. References

# References

Adrianna. "BTS Expert." Chesterfield: Me, 7 October 2019. Snapchat.

Haylie. "One Direction Expert." Detroit: Me, 7 October 2019. Text.

isamoose, Wattpad user. "Bought By One Direction." n.d. _Wattpad._ Wattpad Fanfiction.

Unknown. "BTS Dorms: Here's Who Rooms With Whom." 15 June 2018. _www.koreaboo.com._ Article.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed. This story started as a joke but obviously became serious. Dare I say...I may write a sequel. 
> 
> (Girlgroup Castle coming soon...)


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